A commenter on my blog once expressed his dislike for the figurative use of DNA, so I said the aversion must be in his genes. There’s a quite remarkable extended metaphor along these lines quoted in Janet Byron Anderson’s book Sick English:
“After more than a decade of remapping techno’s DNA by splicing electronic beats with Mexican regional folk music, … the tandem has added yet another chromosome to its sonic gene pool…” (Reed Johnson, LA Times, 2010).
Another example that comes to mind is viral. When it was adopted by IT from medicine/biology, it acquired a negative connotation but in its most recent usage in general discourse it denotes a positive concept (“very popular and spreading very quickly”).
[…] It’s all in the genes: DNA and metaphor fa alcuni esempi di termini scientifici e informatici inglesi che sono entrati nel linguaggio comune in senso figurato, a volte con un significato più generico (determinologizzazione), altre invece con nuove accezioni. […]
That’s a great quote from Reed Johnson, Stan. Thanks, Licia, for that interesting observation. Most of the nontechnical terms in IT start as metaphors (window, icon, recycle, Trojan [horse], cut-and-paste etc), and a computer virus is always something bad. But ‘going viral’ is definitely positive – it’s what we’re all aiming for!
[…] between Chechnya and the Czech Republic. At Macmillan Dictionary blog, Michael Rundell delved into DNA as metaphor; Miles Craven and Karen Richardson told the stories of the words stroke and dandelion; and Stan […]
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A commenter on my blog once expressed his dislike for the figurative use of DNA, so I said the aversion must be in his genes. There’s a quite remarkable extended metaphor along these lines quoted in Janet Byron Anderson’s book Sick English:
“After more than a decade of remapping techno’s DNA by splicing electronic beats with Mexican regional folk music, … the tandem has added yet another chromosome to its sonic gene pool…” (Reed Johnson, LA Times, 2010).
Another example that comes to mind is viral. When it was adopted by IT from medicine/biology, it acquired a negative connotation but in its most recent usage in general discourse it denotes a positive concept (“very popular and spreading very quickly”).
[…] It’s all in the genes: DNA and metaphor fa alcuni esempi di termini scientifici e informatici inglesi che sono entrati nel linguaggio comune in senso figurato, a volte con un significato più generico (determinologizzazione), altre invece con nuove accezioni. […]
That’s a great quote from Reed Johnson, Stan. Thanks, Licia, for that interesting observation. Most of the nontechnical terms in IT start as metaphors (window, icon, recycle, Trojan [horse], cut-and-paste etc), and a computer virus is always something bad. But ‘going viral’ is definitely positive – it’s what we’re all aiming for!
[…] between Chechnya and the Czech Republic. At Macmillan Dictionary blog, Michael Rundell delved into DNA as metaphor; Miles Craven and Karen Richardson told the stories of the words stroke and dandelion; and Stan […]