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Richard UtzRichard Utz, professor and chair of the School of Literature, Media and Communication, spoke with Georgia Tech Institute Communications on the use of metaphors in business communications.
“Ever since Robin Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s landmark 2003 study, Metaphors We Live By, there has been a broader recognition of metaphors — a figure of speech in which a word/phrase is linked to an object or action to which it is not literally connected: thinking does not ever happen in boxes,” said Richard Utz. “They try to help simplify and link more complex subject matter with commonly comprehensible objects, such as fruit and boxes, to enable easy communication.”
Utz, who has a background in the stuy of rhetoric and linguistics, noted that phrases like buzzwords and metaphors are often tied to a specific region, class, gender, or race, and are therefore subject to the danger of misinterpretation. In addition to the generational nature of buzzwords, wherein older people may lack familiarity with emergent phrases and likewise, Utz notes other challenges in communication.
“Another danger of misinterpretation has to do with the cultural specificity of many buzzwords and their inbuilt metaphors,” said Utz. “Thus, while a German will probably get the idea of ‘thinking outside the box,’ the German will prefer using a different buzz phrase to express the same issue — über den Tellerrand schauen — which is translated as: ‘to look beyond the edge of one’s plate.’”
Despite the potential for buzzwords to be misinterpreted, Utz does not see a decline in thir use in the near future.
“There really is no way for human beings to do without metaphor or buzz phrases. They render us human beings capable of connecting what we know about our physical and social experience with subjects or issues we could otherwise not comprehend.”
