Thinking With Pigs Certain animals, as the anthropologist Claude
Levi-Strauss explained in his study of totemism, are good for
thinking with (Totemism, 1963). Here are a collection of
quotations from individuals, both eminent and obscure, that use
pigs in their speech. In our thoughts and words, pigs are
generous figures of speech. They freely lend their intrinsic
nature to us for simile and metaphor, hyperbole and idiom. Pigs
are also handy to use in personification or in analogy and
allegory. And pigs are certainly good for swearing. The thought
of ‘pig’ in all its attendant meanings is an indispensable
element of language in every culture that has encountered the
pig. Handy and useful, ‘pig’ augments the meaning of many
concepts — appearance, attitude, behavior, food and even
currency. Throughout the pig’s association with man, their use
to think and speak with has farrowed ideas and images as fit for
a reflective pig as for a man to consider. Many within our
swinish multitude have seen fit to utilize the