Language preserves fossilized worldviews within its living metaphors

Evidence

Why have these terms continued to be used and not been replaced? Is it just through a revulsion against creating new words? Usually, when a new conception replaces the previous one, the previous language continues to be used but is, precisely, used metaphorically. The whole of language is a continuous process of metaphor, and the history of semantics is an aspect of the history of culture; language is at the same time a living thing and a museum of fossils of life and civilisations. When I use the word “disaster” no one can accuse me of believing in astrology, and when I say “by Jove!” no one can assume that I am a worshipper of pagan divinities. These expressions are however a proof that modern civilisation is also a development of paganism and astrology. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1599

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines how new conceptions are carried in old linguistic forms — language as metaphor and ‘museum of fossils’.
• XREF: Connects to the toolkit concept of how colonial/modern vocabularies carry older religious-racial worldviews forward; parallels Said’s point about Orientalist language persisting. — connects to: Positivist truths are linguistic illusions grown canonical through use; Worldviews require permanent organized repetition or they decay; Histories and causal narratives persist buried inside the language used to tell them (+16 more)
• SEED: Essay angle: how categories like ‘terror’ or ‘crusade’ fossilize older civilizational worldviews inside putatively modern secular speech.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1599

Broader Connections

• Histories and causal narratives persist buried inside the language used to tell them #corroborates (0.85)
• Linguistic form lags behind radical historical change #corroborates (0.80)
• Language can distort as well as transmit human culture #qualifies (0.75)