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Fry's English Delight
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MISSED A PROGRAMME?
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 Mondays 25 August - 8 September 2008, 9.00am |
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Charting the change in Language |
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Metaphor (25 August 2008)
The first programme about Metaphor, is itself built on an extended marine metaphor – that language is shaped, like a coastline, by a flow of metaphors, which erode, break down and eventually become part of everyday speech and writing. All three programmes chart change in language.
There’s a world of difference between metaphor in every day speech and in poetry, but the same process – a transfer of meaning from the concrete to the abstract is in operation. The programme also illustrates how dependent the English language is on Metaphor, with the help of a Greek removals firm. |
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Quotations (1 September 2008)
The second programme, about Quotations, their uses and misuses, gets inside the heads of those who compile quotation dictionaries as well as those who use and abuse them, and reveals why Wittgenstein is unquotable.
There is also discussion of the value of misquotations, and an amazing and frank confession from a compiler, which we cannot divulge here.
Compilers of dictionaries of quotations can be quite powerful, conferring greatness on quite small bits of text. And sometimes, chance remarks get star quotes status. At least, this is what they say. And they would say that, wouldn’t they? |
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Cliché (8 September 2008)
Basically, this one’s about Cliché. Right? It looks at how cliché operates for good and bad.
Using forensic techniques known only to Radio 4 producers, we have tracked down That Parrot. The sick one much used in football talk. It makes its first appearance at a fancy dress party on a transatlantic liner, before World War One. We kid you not. You couldn’t make it up.
Also the remarkable history of the dog’s bollocks, possibly the world’s first self-cancelling cliché. And the cliché crisis, that affected the writing of Flaubert, Joyce and Eliot and helped shape modern language and culture. At the end of the day. |
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Playfully informative programmes aimed at broadening listeners’ knowledge and occasionally venturing into some difficult and contentious areas. 
