cross-linguistic metaphors (fwd)

[Rankin, Robert L]

My grandmother-in-law used "dunkel" for 'dimwitted', but this may have been Milwaukee German.

Bob

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From: owner-siouan at lists.Colorado.EDU [owner-siouan at lists.Colorado.EDU] on behalf of "Alfred W. Tüting" [ti at fa-kuan.muc.de]
Sent: Thursday, February 24, 2011 11:35 AM
To: siouan at lists.Colorado.EDU
Subject: Re: cross-linguistic metaphors (fwd)

In principle I share Rory's view.

As for the German language, I only come up with expressions like "er ist ein heller Kopf/helles Köpfchen", about: he's a light (i.e. bright) head/little head = canny) or still more coll. "er ist hell auf der Platte" (panel/plate etc. maybe also ref. to head). Whereas re. "dim-witted" there seems to be just the negation of it: "er ist kein großes (Kirchen-)Licht" (not a big church-light).

Alfred


Am 24.02.2011 um 06:05 schrieb Rory M Larson:

Bob wrote:
> What I find interesting is the fact that, after centuries
> of interactions with Germans and lots of bilingualism,
> this metaphor hasn't penetrated Czech.  I'd have expected
> it to be more or less pan-European.

Does this metaphor exist even in German?  I'm looking in an unabridged Collins dictionary, and I see almost nothing in there to support what we're looking for.  An idea can be glaenzend, which means 'shiny' or 'lustrous', as can a success or one's prospects.  But a person is intelligent, klug, schlau, aufgeweckt ("woken-up"), gewitzt or gescheit.  As far as I know, none of these indicates luminousity.  'Stupid', 'fool(ish)' or 'dimwit' gets dumm, bloed, Narr, Tor, Schwachkopf ("weak-head") and daemlich.  Daemlich looks like it might possibly be related to a set of "daemmer" words that float around the meaning of 'dusk' or 'twilight'.  If so, it's the only German usage I see that really works for this metaphor.

In a (much smaller) French dictionary, I find even less support for it.  'Intelligent', 'smart' and 'clever' get intelligent, vif ("lively"), eveille ("wide-awake"), habile ("able") and adroit ("right-handed"?).  'Stupid', 'dumb' and 'fool(ish)' get stupide, sot, imbecile, fou, bouffon and bete ("beast").  'Dim' merely gets us sombre, indistinct and terne, which seem to have no reference to intelligence.  Both dictionaries recognize the metaphorical English use of "bright" and offer "intelligent" as a translation, but no native luminousity metaphor for the same idea.

I took a quick look at some Oxford English Dictionary entries for "bright", "brilliant", "dim" and "dim-wit".  It looks to me like the metaphor developed in two stages in English.  In the early 18th century, philosophers were using such luminousity terms as metaphors for "enlightenment" and understanding.  "Dim" as a metaphor for poor vision goes back to the 16th century and probably played a supporting role in the inability-to-see/understand metaphor.  "Bright" and "dim" as terms for native intelligence seem to have developed in the 19th century as a humorous colloquialization of the enlightenment metaphor.  The term "dim-wit" seems to have appeared first in the 1920s.  Prior to the 18th century, "bright" was used metaphorically on people to say that they were beautiful, fair and comely; "brilliant" meant that they were distinguished, elegant and high-class.

Equation of intelligence to luminousity does not seem to be a universal metaphor at all, or even pan-European.  As far as I can tell, it is a peculiar development in English that took place in the last three hundred years.

Rory

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Alfred W. Tüting
ti at fa-kuan.muc.de<mailto:ti at fa-kuan.muc.de>