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Chapter 2. Toward(s), to, in/into, inward, outward, through, out (of), from (vs off), away (from)
Sometimes, though, the sense of through that we saw in (22) comes to the fore – particularly in association with a present perfect verb. In these cases, the notions of entry and exit are not at all prominent: (25) He says he’s been through hell and never got depressed.W
In (26) we see, first of all, the basic meaning at play and then the secondary sense in which entrance and exit fade from view: (26) A reader should never be through with that book, but continue to circle through it as one lives life.W
Note that we often speak of situations and experiences as if they were physical spaces, objects or substances that can be entered, left, avoided, and so on. This kind of metaphorical thinking has traditionally been called reificationG (= ‘thingification of something abstract’). Reification is so fundamental to ordinary thought and expression that it is easy to overlook, and it can sometimes be difficult to express some notions, like that of experience, without reification.2 6.3 M etaphorical through ~ ‘because of’, ‘by means of’, ‘owing to the action of’ The following are also examples of reification of experience: (27) The road to success comes through hard work.W (28) …and through smoking and that, I lost my leg. [An amputee, Meridian Evening News, 3.3.1995]
The usage seen here, is particularly common in UK sports reportage: (29) Bolton [a football team]…promptly scored a second through Anelka [a player].W
. Reification cannot necessarily be avoided through using vocabulary derived from another language. For example, a dictionary with good etymological information will show that the word experience itself has the following history. In Latin, per = ‘through’ + ire = ‘go’, yielded perire = ‘try’. This makes sense because try x can mean ‘go through x once or twice to see what x is like’. Additionally, -entia is a noun ending; and ex = ‘out of ’. So, ex/per/i/entia ~ ‘out-of/going/through/ness’, or ‘what is learned by going through something’. For a larger, more nuanced view of reification, see Lakoff (1993). (Langacker [1987, 2008a] sometimes uses the term reification differently, i.e. in the Gestalt Psychology sense whereby an assembly of individuals may be are conceived of as a single entity, e.g. cows → a herd.)