Metonymy of the week
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Lawrence Downes, "How to turn Sean Hannity into food for worms", WaPo 8/6/2020:
I didn’t set out to compost Sean Hannity. It was something I settled on after considering several other options and rejecting them one by one. The first was leaving him in the basement indefinitely. That worked for a while. I could almost forget about him there, but then I would go down with a basket of laundry and see him and think, I have to do something.
I should explain: I don’t mean the man himself, but Hannity the book. It’s called “Let Freedom Ring: Winning the War of Liberty Over Liberalism.”
The article's subhead gives the game away: "Rancid words can make excellent radishes. Just shred and compost." Also the image:
The OED glosses metonymy as
(A figure of speech characterized by) the action of substituting for a word or phrase denoting an object, action, institution, etc., a word or phrase denoting a property or something associated with it, e.g. as when referring to the monarchy as ‘the crown’ or the theatre as ‘the stage’; an instance of this. (b) In extended use: a thing used or regarded as a substitute for or symbol of something else. Also (esp. in Linguistics and Literary Theory): the process of semantic association involved in producing and understanding a metonymy.
More succinctly, Wikipedia says that metonymy is "a figure of speech in which a thing or concept is referred to by the name of something closely associated with that thing or concept." So in this case, "Sean Hannity" is used to refer to his books as physical objects, just as "The White House" can be used to refer to the current U.S. executive branch, and "The Washington Post" can be used to refer to (an instance of) the printed newspaper.
Apparently it's safe and effective to compost newspapers as well as books, whether or not you approve of the editorial content.
Of course, composting is a sort of slow microbially-aided burn, though clearly some people who would be reluctant to burn books or newspapers are happy to compost them.
Andreas Johansson said,
August 11, 2020 @ 9:37 am
Is it just me, or is the subtitle of Hannity's book weird? Is it "the War of (Liberty Over Liberalism)", or "the "(War of Liberty) Over Liberalism"? Neither option makes obvious sense to me.
Frans said,
August 11, 2020 @ 9:50 am
I agree it sounds like it might be a (purposeful?) contamination, i.e., with winning people over to liberty from liberalism. It seems the word "against" would make more sense than "over."
Kenny Easwaran said,
August 11, 2020 @ 2:09 pm
I think it's meant to be "victory over liberalism in the war of liberty". Somehow, to me, "victory over X" works better than "winning over X" (I'd rather have "winning against X" or just "defeating X"). But perhaps "victory" got substituted for "winning" in some round of editing, and the preposition wasn't changed.
(Also, the "war for liberty" sounds more natural to me than the "war of liberty", but this might be because I'm imagining a different meaning than Hannity is.)
David Morris said,
August 11, 2020 @ 3:56 pm
Aren't liberty and liberalism fundamentally the same thing? The first dictionary I checked includes 'freedom' twice in four sub-definitions of 'liberalism'.
Frank said,
August 11, 2020 @ 4:46 pm
> Aren't liberty and liberalism fundamentally the same thing?
Yes, but in the US 'liberal' is understood as free choice in social and moral matters while in most other places it stands for economic laissez-faire, thus left-wing in America and right-wing elsewhere.
AntC said,
August 11, 2020 @ 5:31 pm
Aren't liberty and liberalism fundamentally the same thing?
There's (socially) 'liberal' and 'libertarian' (Rand Paul). Either can be spelled upper- or lower- case. They both derive from the same Latin roots; and more specifically Enlightenment thinkers.
wikipedia has an extensive article on 'Libertarianism', including how it's used by both extreme left and extreme right.
I suspect Hannity's 'Liberty' means in the right-wing Libertarian sense; whereas the 'Liberalism' (which should be lower-case) means pale pinko bleeding-heart lefty.
I do find it hilarious: nowhere in Europe would (say) Bernie Sanders be regarded as 'Socialist', let alone radical. The McCarthy anti-Communist era still looms large over U.S. politics.
Andrew Usher said,
August 11, 2020 @ 7:30 pm
'Liberal' in America is understood to mean the mainstream of our left wing; which, I agree, is etymologically wrong, but has become accepted here. This ideology, at least as I see it, puts more emphasis on 'social' issues and less on economic, compared to the left wing elsewhere in the world, which makes using the label 'socialist' for them rather inaccurate.
As for Mr. Sanders, I believe he's called _himself_ 'socialist', so the word isn't (or wasn't) inaccurate. And he did indeed put more emphasis on socialist ideas than any other so prominent figure in American politics has for a long time.
I'm not letting Mr. Hannity off the hook because what he, and our right wing in general, uses the word 'liberty' to mean is incomplete at best, and the people called libertarians here take that to an extreme.
Frans:
But 'the war of liberty against liberalism' wouldn't make sense, and the reverse 'war of liberalism against liberty', while correct, emphasises the wrong one (by his intention). 'Defeating Liberalism in the War for Liberty' would be nearest to it, I think.
k_over_hbarc at yahoo dot com
Jerry Friedman said,
August 11, 2020 @ 9:55 pm
Liberal is indeed related to liberty, but the original meaning of Latin liberalis, according to the OED, was "of or relating to a free man, worthy or typical of a free man (especially of studies, education, arts, professions), worthy of a free man in personal appearance, fine, noble, magnanimous, obliging, free in giving, generous, done or provided on a generous scale, lavish".
From "noble, magnanimous… generous," I assume, we get the the first part of the OED's sense
"4. a. Free from bias, prejudice, or bigotry; open-minded, tolerant; governing or governed by relaxed principles or rules; (Politics) favouring social reform and a degree of state intervention in matters of economics and social justice; left-wing."
Hannity and his friends would, I imagine, cite the political part of that definition as a non sequitur if not an Orwellian contradiction. "How can state intervention be governing by relaxed principles or rules?" they might ask.
I'm going to hazard an answer but will be happy to be corrected. "Liberal" monarchs and prime ministers nobly and generously allowed the people freedom against their (the rulers') narrowly defined self-interest. They lowered taxes, protected the rights of accused people, allowed free religion instead of enforcing a state religion, allowed free speech even when it criticized the monarchs, and such. From this, "liberal" in the U.S. came to mean taking the side of the less powerful against the more powerful, including not only universal adult suffrage and freedom of religion and expression, but also regulation of business, high taxes on the rich, and social-welfare programs. (Modern conservatives will argue that such measures actually hurt the poor, but I'm not going to get into that question.)
Based on "a little learning", I'm even going to suggest that the change in the American meaning of liberal had something to do with the British Liberal Party's change from the free-market policies of Gladstone, who tried to benefit laborers by opposing "those restrictions upon trade which tend to reduce the price to be obtained for the product of their [colliers', in this case] labour", to the welfare policies of Lloyd George and others, which tried to help poor people by redistributing wealth.
Also that it had something to do with the American civil-rights movement, in which liberals worked to remove the laws that oppressed black people and other racial minorities. They also tried to help minorities by promoting or passing laws against racial discrimination, requiring "affirmative action", trying to pass laws against hate speech, and such. Thus "liberal" now has more to do with whose side one takes than with whether one favors less or more restrictive laws.
I'm not saying this is the whole story. I've left out employer-employee relations and many other important subjects. I'm just giving them as illustrations of how the American meaning of liberal might have come to be what it is.
Finally, as a liberal, I'll say that I agree with the Libertarians about something. They say that American liberals are for social freedom and against economic freedom and conservatives are for the opposite. By and large, I think that's on the right track.
Andreas Johansson said,
August 11, 2020 @ 11:58 pm
I do find it hilarious: nowhere in Europe would (say) Bernie Sanders be regarded as 'Socialist', let alone radical.
I've certainly seen him described as a "socialist" in the Swedish press. But then, plenty of people would call our government "socialist", including some who are in it.
Frans said,
August 12, 2020 @ 1:01 am
@Andrew
I didn't say "against" would be the most elegant solution, merely that such a simple substitution would more accurately convey what I perceive as the intended meaning — which doesn't seem to be contexts in which one would use "over," such as "winning the war (of/for liberty) over the soul of liberalism" or "winning people over to liberty (from liberalism)."
Cookie said,
August 12, 2020 @ 2:42 am
Sometimes I'm tempted to troll the overzealous correctors of "Frankenstein" (It should be "Frankenstein's monster", brah!) with "Oh, I'm just lowkey employing metonymy."
Philip Taylor said,
August 12, 2020 @ 7:04 am
"pale pinko bleeding-heart lefty" — would that be what most people would think of as someone concerned for his fellow human beings, for their welfare, and for the welfare of the planet ?
Picky said,
August 12, 2020 @ 7:18 am
As a member for most of my lifetime of the (British) Liberal (now Liberal Democrat) Party, I am happy to be a pale pinko bleeding-heart lefty.
Robert Coren said,
August 12, 2020 @ 10:11 am
I had a colleague in the software industry, ages ago, who tended to personify programs; this meant that he would describe a procedure saying "he does this" and "she does that", where the gender of the pronoun conformed to the sex of the (principal) author of the routine in question. I guess this is a kind of metonymy.
Brett said,
August 12, 2020 @ 1:31 pm
There’s an additional element here. “Food for worms,” and similar expressions, when applied to a person, were traditional English euphemisms for “dead,” as in my favorite passage from Hamlet:
Claudius: Now Hamlet, where's Polonius?
Hamlet: At supper.
Claudius: At supper? Where?
Hamlet: Not where he eats, but where he is eaten. A certain convocation of politic worms are e'en at him.
The notion of of the dead being eaten by worms (“worm’s meat”) was actually partially a misunderstanding of the difference between earthworms and maggots.
Philip Taylor said,
August 12, 2020 @ 3:03 pm
'The notion of of the dead being eaten by worms (“worm’s meat”) was actually partially a misunderstanding of the difference between earthworms and maggots' — but was it ? Unless the flies had already laid their eggs on the corpse before it was interred, it would be difficult (if not impossible) for them to do so once interment was complete. In which case, would earthworms not be the most likely creatures (other than fungi and bacteria) to ingest (the remains of) the corpse ?
Frans said,
August 12, 2020 @ 3:29 pm
The suggestion itself sounds a priori fairly plausible, just not quite in the form it's expressed.
The word worm was used in a much broader sense in the past, including most (all?) insects and arthropods, but in the here more relevant, restricted (later?) sense all boneless things like larvae and worms. But just because you call all crawling boneless things "worms" doesn't mean you don't know the rather obvious difference between maggots and earthworms. All maggots are worms, but not all worms are maggots.
maidhc said,
August 12, 2020 @ 4:25 pm
There was a mouse living in our compost box, but apparently my wife shut the lid on it and killed it. She decided she had better retrieve the corpse, but when she looked there was nothing left but fur. And that was just a couple of days later.
Andrew Usher said,
August 12, 2020 @ 7:44 pm
Frans:
I still do not understand. Making the literal substitution of 'against' would give
"Winning the War of Liberty Against Liberalism"
which is no better, and perhaps not even grammatical.
Jerry Friedman says:
I agree with the Libertarians about something. They say that American liberals are for social freedom and against economic freedom and conservatives are for the opposite. By and large, I think that's on the right track.
Sort of, but both directions are quite oversimplified, and I hope you agree that the use Libertarians make of this argument is objectionable – i.e. to say or imply that they're the only people that care about both kinds of freedom, and therefore all freedom.
Jerry Friedman said,
August 12, 2020 @ 8:33 pm
Andrew Usher: Thanks for reading or at least skipping to the end of my comment. I don't remember that exact claim, though I certainly might have seen it and forgotten it, but I would object to it.
Frans said,
August 13, 2020 @ 1:48 am
@Andrew
I don't think it's any more or less grammatical, regardless if the original phrasing is fully grammatical. In my view replacing "over" with "against" or vice versa affects nothing but the meaning. The blurb clearly describes a war against liberalism, not a war over liberalism. It's a war over liberty, not over liberalism.
Peter Taylor said,
August 13, 2020 @ 2:15 am
Frans wrote:
I can think of at least one example of that broader sense in contemporary usage: the worm in a bottle of tequila, which is a larva. However, there's a question as to what extent that's the persistence of an older English word vs a calque from Spanish, where gusano covers worms and many larvae.
Robert Coren said,
August 13, 2020 @ 9:14 am
Not just insects and arthropods; in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, Cleopatra asks the provider of the asp with which she will later commit suicide, "Hast thou the pretty worm of Nilus there, that kills and pains not?"
Cross-lingual note: In Wagner's Ring des Nibelungen, the creature that Alberich briefly, and Fafner more permanently, turn themselves into is referred to as a Wurm (also Schlangenwurm), suggesting something legless, but for some reason it is always translated as "dragon", despite the existence of a perfectly good German word (Drache) for the latter.
Trogluddite said,
August 13, 2020 @ 11:11 am
English still uses "Worm" in the "(legless?) monster" sense in the folklore of Northern Britain. It is preserved in legends of the heroic killing of such beasts as the Sockburn Worm, the Worm of Linton, and, most famously, the Lambton Worm (allegedly the inspiration for Bram Stoker's tale 'The Lair of the White Worm').
Different tellings sometimes disagree about the number of legs and/or wings possessed by the beasts, and the terms "worm", "serpent", "wyvern", and "dragon" are often used somewhat interchangeably (according to heraldic taxonomy, a wyvern has two legs, and a dragon four). However, "worm" to indicate these fierce cryptids is canonical in at least the titles of these legends, and they bring in a little local tourist trade, so this meaning isn't likely to die out completely any time soon.
Andrew Usher said,
August 13, 2020 @ 6:17 pm
Frans:
The semantic meaning is clear and I have no issue there. But if not ungrammatical, the word order and syntax is awkward. I think 'over' is legitimate to mean 'against' here, though surely it may have been prompted by the unwritten 'war over liberty'; the trouble with substituting 'against' is that it makes the most natural syntactical reading "the war of (liberty against liberalism)", which is silly. That, and not any disagreement with your analysis, is why I suggested rewriting it instead.
Frans said,
August 14, 2020 @ 2:26 am
That's where I have to disagree. I think using "over" to mean "against" is ungrammatical. I think it must be contamination between something like "achieving victory over" and "winning against." And of course the phrase "winning over" is legitimate by itself in the sense of persuading someone.
I think it's closer to something like "[The War of the Worlds] against Mars" or "[The Great War] against the Triple Alliance." Which is stylistically awkward compared to "The War of the Worlds" or "the war against Mars" used separately but not wrong.
In that reading the more natural phrasing would be "[the war for liberty] against liberalism," but then you wouldn't have the War of Liberty branding.
But as for "the war of [liberty against liberalism]," I don't see much of a problem either. That's just a synecdoche. Not the most elegant one, but it doesn't seem any sillier to me than claiming that liberalism is opposed to freedom in the first place. :-)
Andrew Usher said,
August 14, 2020 @ 7:56 pm
Claiming that something called 'liberalism' can't be opposed to freedom would be an etymological fallacy. Anyway, I (like the others here, I think) was only trying to correctly convey Hannity's intended meaning, not argue the politics about said meaning. And the intended meaning wasn't a synecdoche or anything subtle, but just winning the 'war' about 'liberty' in opposition to 'liberalism'. The title, as we can agree, wasn't the best phrasing of that.
As to the point of whether 'winning over' is legitimate, I can't say. It just sounds OK to me, if not the usual collocation. Yes, 'winning over' has another, idiomatic meaning (as a phrasal verb), but other phrasal verbs unquestionably do have the same ambiguity ; in practice, whether an object of the preposition is present settles which meaning is correct.
Haamu said,
August 14, 2020 @ 10:21 pm
Possibly, but since that wasn’t what Frans claimed, it’s unclear why you’re making that observation.
M said,
August 15, 2020 @ 5:39 am
Historically, political liberalism in the US has been mainly about the degree to which a person is engaged in the perceived international liberation struggles of oppressed people in society (workers liberation, Black liberation, women's lib), and so tends to lean into left wing activism and radicalism, and tends to involve extensive proposals that the state be empowered to do specific things to aid such "oppressed and exploited" peoples.
While actually preserving the economic liberalism that the US already practices is an act of conservation of status quo.
Hence in a US context, the meanings shift such that liberalism = "liberation struggle"ism = left wing radicalism, whilst preserving a "liberal economic system" = conservativism.