Mixed Metaphors: Their Use and Abuse

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Critics shudder at mixed metaphors like that wet blanket is a loose cannon, but admire Lifes but a walking shadow, a poor player, and all the metaphors packed into Macbeths Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow speech. How is it that metaphors are sometimes mixed so badly and other times put together so well In Mixed Metaphors: Their Use and Abuse, Karen Sullivan employs findings from linguistics and cognitive science to explore how metaphors are combined and why they sometimes mix. Once we understand the ways that metaphoric ideas are put together, we can appreciate why metaphor combinations have such a wide range of effects. Mixed Metaphors: Their Use and Abuse includes analyses of over a hundred metaphors from politicians, sportspeople, writers and other public figures, and identifies the characteristics that make these metaphors annoying, amusing or astounding.

Reviews

[Using] copious real-life examples Sullivan makes apt points about the formal properties of some good and bad mixed metaphors - how close the metaphorical elements stand to each other and how congruent their underlying conceptual metaphors are. * Times Literary Supplement *
[Mixed Metaphors could] serve as a popular introduction to CMT covering a wide range of examples drawn from spoken, written and multimodal discourses, advertising, science, literature and media (i.e. press, electronic and social media). Its popular appeal is reinforced by further reading recommendations that are attached to seven of the nine chapters ... These aspects make the book accessible to undergraduate students and a wider audience who may not have had any academic teaching on metaphors. * Journal of Pragmatics *
Informative and rich in content ... A trailblazer in providing a comprehensive introduction to mixed metaphors. * Discourse Studies *

Author Bio

Karen Sullivan is a Senior Lecturer in Linguistics at the University of Queensland, Australia