“Metaphor has traditionally been regarded as the matrix and pattern of the figures of speech.”
Source: 1980s, Laws of Media: The New Science (with Eric McLuhan) (1988), p. 231
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Marshall McLuhan 416
Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor … 1911–1980Related quotes
"Politics and the English Language" (1946)
Context: Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. Never use a long word where a short one will do. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out. Never use the passive voice where you can use the active. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
Michael Halliday (1985, p. xxiii) cited in: David Brazil (1995) A Grammar of Speech. p. 10.
1970s and later
From the essay "Toward a Theory of Moral Development," published in the anthology The Next Fifty Years: Science in the First Half of the Twenty-First Century, edited by John Brockman
Source: The Invisible Bankers, Everything The Insurance Industry Never Wanted You To Know (1982), Chapter 3, You Can't Tell the Players, p. 39.
“Our set of questions is best regarded as a metaphor of our sense of relevance.”
[1] Will your questions increase the learner's will as well as capacity to learn? Will they help to give him a sense of joy in learning? Will they help to provide the learner with confidence in his ability to learn?
[2] In order to get answers, will the learner be required to make inquiries? (Ask further questions, clarify terms, make observations, classify data, etc?)
[3] Does each question allow for alternative answers (which implies alternative modes of inquiry)?
[4] Will the process of answering the questions tend to stress the uniqueness of the learner?
[6] Would the answers help the learner to sense and understand the universals in the human condition and so enhance his ability to draw closer to other people?
Teaching as a Subversive Activity (1969)
Context: These questions are not intended to represent a catechism for the new education. These are samples and illustrations of the kind of questions we think worth answering. Our set of questions is best regarded as a metaphor of our sense of relevance. If you took the trouble to list your own questions, it is quite possible that you prefer many or them to ours. Good enough. The new education is a process and will not suffer from the applied imaginations of all who wish to be a part of it. But in evaluating your own questions, as well as ours, bear in mind that there are certain standards that must be used. These standards must also be stated in the form of questions:
Addendum for C
Drafts and Fragments of Cantos CX-CXVII
Source: 1990s and beyond, The Book of Probes : Marshall McLuhan (2011), p. 298