- Joined
- Aug 11, 2011
- Messages
- 73,410
- Reaction score
- 45,134
- Gender
- Female
- Political Leaning
- Conservative
From Thomas Lifson at American Thinker:
If you can control the language people are allowed to use, you can control their minds, as George Orwell masterfully explained. Some (not all) vegans, convinced of their moral superiority in eschewing the flesh of animals, would like to see our language change so as to change or eliminate common English-language expressions like "bring home the bacon" that refer to the eating of meat. https://www.americanthinker.com/blo...ith_proposal_to_eliminate_meat_metaphors.html
Lifson offers a clip of Tucker Carlson riffing on this, saying that he doesn't want to beat a dead horse. :mrgreen:
Here is a bit from the original article, which begins by explaining that meat is a source of societal power of which disadvantaged groups are deprived and that to control the supply of meat is to control the people:
The increased awareness of vegan issues will filter through our consciousness to produce new modes of expression – after all, there’s more than one way to peel a potato. At the same time, metaphors involving meat could gain an increased intensity if the killing of animals for food becomes less socially acceptable. The image of “killing two birds with one stone” is, if anything, made more powerful by the animal-friendly alternative of “feeding two birds with one scone”. If veganism forces us to confront the realities of food’s origins, then this increased awareness will undoubtedly be reflected in our language and our literature.
However, that is not to say that meaty descriptions will be done away with immediately – after all, it can take language a long time to change. And who is to say that even those who choose a vegan or vegetarian diet even want to do away with the meaty descriptions? It is interesting to note that a range of vegetarian burgers have been made to “bleed” like real meat. Although the animal components of such foods are substituted, attempts are made to replicate the carnivorous experience. Beetroot blood suggests the symbolic power of meat may well carry into the age of veganism, in which case the idea of meat as power will also remain in literature for some time to come. https://theconversation.com/how-the-rise-of-veganism-may-tenderise-fictional-language-106576
So "There's more than one way to skin a cat" becomes "...to peel a potato." What a consciousness-raising read!
If you can control the language people are allowed to use, you can control their minds, as George Orwell masterfully explained. Some (not all) vegans, convinced of their moral superiority in eschewing the flesh of animals, would like to see our language change so as to change or eliminate common English-language expressions like "bring home the bacon" that refer to the eating of meat. https://www.americanthinker.com/blo...ith_proposal_to_eliminate_meat_metaphors.html
Lifson offers a clip of Tucker Carlson riffing on this, saying that he doesn't want to beat a dead horse. :mrgreen:
Here is a bit from the original article, which begins by explaining that meat is a source of societal power of which disadvantaged groups are deprived and that to control the supply of meat is to control the people:
The increased awareness of vegan issues will filter through our consciousness to produce new modes of expression – after all, there’s more than one way to peel a potato. At the same time, metaphors involving meat could gain an increased intensity if the killing of animals for food becomes less socially acceptable. The image of “killing two birds with one stone” is, if anything, made more powerful by the animal-friendly alternative of “feeding two birds with one scone”. If veganism forces us to confront the realities of food’s origins, then this increased awareness will undoubtedly be reflected in our language and our literature.
However, that is not to say that meaty descriptions will be done away with immediately – after all, it can take language a long time to change. And who is to say that even those who choose a vegan or vegetarian diet even want to do away with the meaty descriptions? It is interesting to note that a range of vegetarian burgers have been made to “bleed” like real meat. Although the animal components of such foods are substituted, attempts are made to replicate the carnivorous experience. Beetroot blood suggests the symbolic power of meat may well carry into the age of veganism, in which case the idea of meat as power will also remain in literature for some time to come. https://theconversation.com/how-the-rise-of-veganism-may-tenderise-fictional-language-106576
So "There's more than one way to skin a cat" becomes "...to peel a potato." What a consciousness-raising read!