Catachresis

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The catachresis [kataçʁeːzə] ( ancient Greek κατάχρησις katáchrēsis "abuse, use over Fee") refers to a figure of speech and has three different meanings.

Conventionalized metaphor, exmetaphor

Katachresis is the name given to the use of a word that fills a linguistic gap and, like a faded metaphor, is no longer perceived as such. It is often used to name new objects or to create missing terms.

Examples

  • Handkerchief (or in English handkerchief if kerchief = scarf; see below in Fritz Mauthner )
  • Table leg
  • Riverbed
  • Valley floor
  • Key beard

Image break

It is also the name for a semantically inconsistent, sometimes contradicting combination of several linguistic images in one text unit. In ancient times, this was a common means to comedy to create. Today this stylistic device is rarely used. Examples of catachresis as a comic stylistic device can be found, among others, with the Austrian writer Johann Nestroy or the contemporary German cabaret artists Piet Klocke and Johann König .

If a catachresis happens unintentionally (e.g. through the process of making a promise as a combination of two or more idioms), it is viewed as a rather embarrassing or comical style error .

Examples

  • Even a blind hen lays an egg.
  • But you put a maggot in my bacon.
  • After that no more crows today.
  • Your hat string bursts.
  • I experienced that with my own flesh and blood.
  • But that's not exactly the real thing about the egg.
  • This is the wood that washcloths are made of.
  • This is the spark that brings the barrel to overflow.
  • That puts the crown on the barrel! or That hits the barrel in the face!
  • The ravages of time, which has already dried so many tears, will also cause grass to grow over this wound.
  • There is no point in filling up the well when the child is burned. ( Heinz Erhardt )
  • It is gratifying that the political extremities were unable to gain a foothold in Germany. ( Ludwig Erhard )
  • I'll show you where the rake hangs.
  • Lead someone behind the ear.
  • Pour a clean table.
  • Addressing a sensitive issue.
  • Cobbler, stick with your apples!
  • If all else fails, I'll hang myself!
  • When the water is up to your neck, you shouldn't hang your head. ( Ingrid Matthäus-Maier )
  • We're all pulling on the same boat.
  • Jump off the cliff for death.
  • Are on the wood steamer.
  • No green denominator can be found
  • Sweep something under someone else's shoes.

Linking a complex issue with an image

The literary scholar Jürgen Link , on the other hand, considers catachresis to be the fundamental principle with which (especially in the mass media) various special discourses (science, economics, medicine, etc.) and complex issues can be linked with an image that is immediately plausible and automatically made by the recipient is understood. The catachresis is therefore not an example of bad style, but a fundamental principle of text production. The areas of the picture, which are particularly catchy due to their strong pragmatic anchoring, are particularly suitable for this : ships, automobiles, environmental disasters, organisms, game metaphors, etc. The choice of picture area and the phenomenon it is intended to express also refer to the fundamental ideological position of the image producer - Economic processes are often symbolized by natural disasters in order to make them appear “natural”.

Examples

  • What Oskar Lafontaine and Gregor Gysi offer is even more of the medicine with which the over-controlled and state-directed German economy was driven into the ditch. (FAZ, June 20, 2005). Image areas: organism (medicine), music (conducted), technology (driven into the ditch, connotes car and road).
  • With its high ancillary wage costs, the patient has lost his way in Germany in the storms of globalization. When will it go down? Image areas: organism (patient), nature (storms), technology (shipwreck).
  • I promise this government a 'hot autumn', they like (sic?) To dress warmly. ( Claudia Roth , politician, Tagesschau; February 5, 2010).

literature

  • Jürgen Link : The structure of the symbol in the language of journalism. On the relationship between literary and pragmatic symbols . Fink, Munich 1978, ISBN 3-7705-1501-3 (plus habilitation thesis, University of Bochum).
  • Fritz Mauthner : Catachresis . In: Ders .: On linguistics. Contributions to a Critique of Language, Vol. 2 . Ullstein, Frankfurt / M. 1982, ISBN 3-548-35146-8 (reprint of the Stuttgart 1912 edition).
  • Gerald Posselt: Catachresis. Performative rhetoric . Fink, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-7705-3993-1 (plus dissertation, University of Freiburg / B.).
  • Meinolf Schumacher : Metaphor Accumulation and Image Break . In: Ders .: sin filth and purity of heart. Studies on the metaphor of sin in Latin and German literature of the Middle Ages (Münstersche Mittelalter-Schriften; Vol. 73). Fink, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-7705-3127-2 , pp. 43-49 ( digitized version ).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Gero von Wilpert : Subject dictionary of literature (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 231). 7th, improved and enlarged edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 1989, ISBN 3-520-23107-7 , p. 443.
  2. ↑ a b c d e Hadumod Bußmann : Lexicon of Linguistics (= Kröner's pocket edition. Volume 452). 2nd, completely revised edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 1990, ISBN 3-520-45202-2 , p. 371.