The Book of Babel

A celebration of the confusion surrounding language, which explores the relationship between words and the world. The author examines connections between groups of seemingly unrelated words, traces the origin of words and describes the power of language to pull perception in its wake.

This rich, thoughtful book studies the link between word and perception and explains the powerful, sometimes strange and beautiful workings of metaphor in language and culture. The author writes: "This book subscribes to what has been called the 'strong metaphor' theory whereby metaphor, so often treated as the product of 'fancy,' is considered to be at the psychological deep core of perception. ...[M]etaphors not only arise out of perception but are formative of it." To explore this elusive thesis, the book is organized into two roughly equal parts. The first is a collection of 52 short essays in five chapters that weave together many surprisingly colorful linguistic threads involving psychology, etymology, myth, religion, art, and literature. These essays feature a delightful set of examples of metaphorical words and phrases from many languages and cultures. The second part of the book is a selective lexicon (some 150 pages long) illustrating many of the points made in the narrative. This alphabetical list examines in some depth such words as adultery, Black Maria, Cafe coronary, gossamer, pidgin, snow, walnut, and zip-fastener. For larger collections.?Paul D'Alessandro, Portland P.L., Me.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.