tiger mothers and other tiggers

[Laurence Horn]

At 12:37 PM -0500 1/24/11, Robin Hamilton wrote:
>From: "Victor Steinbok" <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
>
>>I suppose, the real question is
>>what Chua got her terminology, if she did not coin it herself (i.e.,
>>China==Tiger symbolism).
>
>How many tigers are there currently around?  The other one that immediately
>springs to mind is "tiger economy".
>
>Given that this was (am I right?) originally, or at least once, applied to
>the economy of Southern Ireland / Eire, there's something a little
>unfortunate about the choice of this term to apply to any activity.

I thought the reference to Ireland's economy (in the good old days of
a few years ago) as "the Celtic Tiger" was a spinoff of the actual
(metaphorical) Tigers of East/Southeast Asia, e.g. Taiwan, South
Korea, Singapore, etc.

>
>Then there's, set in Bagadad in the version I encountered, the story of
>Mullah Nazradin and the tigers, where the punch-line is, "See, it works!"
>

And in the Vietnam era, there was what I assumed was a calque,
describing the U.S. as a "paper tiger".

LH

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