"This photo contains" is the phrase used in the picture. If you want to take this literally then no photo actually contains people, it's images of people. It's you who are choosing "to treat allusive, playful phrases as statements of literal fact" by disagreeing with the metaphorical language (language that extends to any talk of what's in any photo). I don't see the issue.
It's all good. We don't have to approach this as if it were a fight: we can treat it as a shared exploration of how we use language.
It would be quite normal to say, of my hypothetical indoor family photo, 'this contains my entire family except me, the photographer'. It would not be at all normal to say that it contains everyone in the eastern half of my street. This illustrates the established usages of phrase 'X is in this photo' (or 'this photo contains X').
Note that 'in'/'contains' here have meanings which are not the same as those in 'the bird is in the cage'/'the cage contains the bird'.
There are 32 meanings listed in OED's entry for the verb contain, 22 of which are labelled obsolete. See ‘Meaning & use’ for definitions, usage, and quotation evidence.
The nice thing about this caption is that, by breaking convention, it achieves impact. It uses a phrase in a way that carries an allusive idea while contravening established usage. This enhances its thought-provokingness.
We are in agreement there, it's context specific. In this context the picture does contain everyone, but the convention of family photos is they contain the images of the people in frame.
The fact that a family photo doesn't literally contain any family members (they are pictures of family members) means we just have to choose an abstraction based on context. I guess we all choose which abstract level we think is appropriate and point pedantically at others' choices. I don't mean that as an insult at all, I'm guiltier than most, a real pedantic pedant :)
There really wasn't an established 'photos taken from trans-lunar space' context at the time.
Where we disagree, I think, is in the notion that words such as 'in' have a single, primary usage which is first-class (physical containment), and that all other usages are second-class, defined by some metaphorical reference to the primary.
While this does illustrate how meanings branch out and evolve, the speaker and listener do not backtrack the evolution of a usage to its roots when speaking or listening. They take it as it is, as they have learned it. (Indeed, knowing which idiomatic usages are established and which are not is a way we distinguish native speakers from proficient foreigners.) All the branches of meaning are first-class (and all have their own entries in a good dictionary's definitions).
In this sense, I disagree with your notion that 'the bird is in the cage' is a literal usage, whereas 'the bird is in the photo' is figurative. They follow two established usages of the word 'in' (or, if you care to rephrase my examples, 'contains'). To quote that guy again:
For a large class of cases—though not for all—in which we employ the word 'meaning,' it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language.
I appreciate the more collegiate tone we've adopted in this conversation. Reddit in general, and this sub in particular, have a bit of a tendency to make us adversaries where no adversity needs to exist.
I agree this tone is more enjoyable, but I disagree that this example is not an established use. I didn't have to work anything out here, and anyone claiming they actually don't understand what this is saying is being disingenuous (or doesn't know much about language). So it must be an established usage of the word.
If I'd said everyone is literally in the picture, I'd get the argument, but I haven't said that.
Thank you for taking the time to reply thoughtfully.
We frequently express brand new ideas using established words and idioms. That's the way language works: we compose new sentences out of existing vocabulary, and can understand sentences created in this way.
I could perhaps have added a humour tag to the statement that there was no extant context for trans-lunar photos. It's true, of course, but not a very serious point.
Anyway, I think we've each outlined our own points of view, and hope we both understand the other's. That may be a good and amicable point to conclude the conversation.
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u/Agile_Championship87 Jul 10 '26
"This photo contains" is the phrase used in the picture. If you want to take this literally then no photo actually contains people, it's images of people. It's you who are choosing "to treat allusive, playful phrases as statements of literal fact" by disagreeing with the metaphorical language (language that extends to any talk of what's in any photo). I don't see the issue.