Metaphors We Live By

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Metaphors We Live By
George Lakoff Mark Johnston, The University of
Chicago Press, 1980
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Our ordinary conceptual system is
fundamentally metaphorical in nature.
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Language for the metaphorical concept that
argument is war

• Attacking a position.
• Gaining ground.
• Shooting down
• your opponent.
• Winning loosing.

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Consider the systematic metaphorical
concept that time is money.
Will we waste it, save it, or spend it?
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Highlighting and hiding your assumptions may
be showing

• Consider the conduit metaphor, a complex
• metaphor for language about language.
• Ideas (or meanings) are objects.
• Linguistic expressions are
  containers.
• Communication is sending.

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• What are the assumptions behind the language of
  the conduit metaphor?
• Its hard to get that idea across to him.
• I gave you that idea.
• Your reasons came through to us.
• Its difficult to put my ideas into words.
• His words carry little meaning.
• Try to pack more thought into fewer words.

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The conduit metaphor assumes that

• Words and sentences have meanings in themselves,
  independent of any context
• or speaker.

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Orientational metaphors or Im feeling up
today.

• Happy is up sad is down.
• Conscious is up unconscious is down.
• Health and life are up sickness and death are
  down.

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Ontological metaphors the nature of being
The mind is a machine. The wheels turning now!
The mind is a brittle object. Hes
cracking up!
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More . . . .

1. Ideas are people.
2. Ideas are plants.
3. Ideas are food.
4. Ideas are products.
5. Ideas are commodities.
6. Ideas are resources.
7. Ideas are money.
8. Ideas are cutting instruments.
9. Ideas are fashions.

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And still (a)more . . . .

1. Love is a physical force.
2. Love is madness.
3. Love is magic.
4. Love is war.

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Personification - animating an
object or entity

• This paper will demonstrate my theory.
• Inflation is eating up our profits.

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Which human characteristics will you give your
object?

• Inflation has attacked the foundation of our
  economy.
• Inflation has pinned us to the wall.
• Inflation has robbed me of my savings.
• Our biggest enemy right now is inflation.

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This personification casts inflation as a
combatant.
George Bellows, A Stag at Sharkeys (1917)
The San Diego Museum of Art
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Metonymy Synecdoche figures of
substitution

• So, she vanquished them, horse and foot . . .
  .
• William Faulkner, A Rose for Emily
• Well always have Paris.
• Humphrey Bogart to
  Ingrid Bergman, Casablanca

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So, where will you be when the chips are down?
If your life, metaphorically, is a game of chance,
youll need an ace in the hole.