{"id":979,"date":"2015-05-11T20:17:10","date_gmt":"2015-05-12T01:17:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=979"},"modified":"2015-05-11T20:17:10","modified_gmt":"2015-05-12T01:17:10","slug":"analyzing-cliches-literally","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2015\/05\/11\/analyzing-cliches-literally\/","title":{"rendered":"Analyzing Cliches Literally"},"content":{"rendered":"
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“The state is home to the towering Cascades” … have you ever stopped to think about the cliched turns of phrase writers use in their everyday craft?\u00a0 How about that one, above?\u00a0 Let’s think about it a moment – without greater contextual knowledge, what’s the older entity – the nebulous political entity we call a state, or the eons old Cascade mountains, not only the static, majestic peaks, but even dynamic, destructively renewing volcanoes?\u00a0 As a “home”, one must make the assumption that the state is the older entity, no?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

And an artificial intelligence, fresh on its first foray into learning about the world, might actually conclude that.\u00a0 We can only hope it is smarter than most humans and marks all of its conclusions contingent upon further learning.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

But never mind that.\u00a0 I wonder if there’s a new, clicheable statement which might capture the essence of the thought expressed without committing cognitive mayhem for those of a more literal bent.\u00a0 At least one cliche already exists, “The Cascades host the state of …”, but it suffers from two problems: it places the focus of thought on the state, rather than the Cascades, and it also replaces the primacy of mankind in the scroll of history.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Perhaps “The unruly, majestic Cascades roil their way through the states of Washington”… it captures both facets of interest, their beauty and dynamicism, while ignoring the political state for what it is, a passing fancy of a self-aware species.<\/p>\n

On query to my Arts Editor, she responded:<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure \u201cRoil\u201d is quite the right word, but it\u2019s evocative, at least.\u00a0 \u201cWend\u201d is a bit too passive.\u00a0 \u201cForge\u201d?\u00a0 \u201cMake\u201d?\u00a0 \u201cMarch\u201d?<\/p>\n

How about: \u201cThe unruly, majestic Cascades span the states of Washington\u2026 etc.\u201d\u00a0 or \u201cThe unruly, majestic Cascades traverse the states of Washington\u2026etc.\u201d ?<\/p>\n

But no, not silly.\u00a0 There\u2019s a point to be made about who was here first.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Or does poetic license trump literal reading?\u00a0 Would the neuro-atypical agree?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“The state is home to the towering Cascades” … have you ever stopped to think about the cliched turns of phrase writers use in their everyday craft?\u00a0 How about that one, above?\u00a0 Let’s think about it a moment – without greater contextual knowledge, what’s the older entity – the nebulous \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=979"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/979\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":980,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/979\/revisions\/980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}