Notes on Metaphors We Live By: George Lakoff and Mark Johnson
Summary
Lakoff and Johnson explain that metaphors are concepts gathered from our physical experiences that construct our language in terms of containers, objects, and sending. Rather our language is a system of metaphors that is based on experience which can differ from cultures. We have metaphors because it is suggested that metaphors help us categorize things in terms of space, time, substance and objects. Metaphors have purposes too. They only work when they have a purpose, but the way they read seem to suggest that sometimes their purpose is in existence without the sender/receiver. That’s impossible.
There are several types of metaphors:
1. Conceptual Metaphors– Argument is War
For this particular metaphor, I do not agree that all arguments take the shape of some battle. I think there is a lot more to an argument than battling and the ART of arguments have changed a lot since this book was written. In this case, the Art of War or Art of Argument challenge the metaphorical coherence of Argument is War.
2. Spatial Metaphors–Under control, Happy is Up Sad is Down.. ect.. Reflective of our bodily experiences.
3. Conduit Metaphors– hide a part of the metaphor. Ex– the cooperative aspect of arguing. “The speaker puts ideas (objects) into words (containers) and sends them along a conduit to a hearer who takes the idea/object out of the word/container.
Ex. It’s hard to get that idea across to him.
Conduit metaphors often suggest that words and sentences have meanings independent of context and speakers.
I think words do tricky things but they never have meaning without a person because people are what give something a meaning. hahah.
4. Structural Metaphors– structured in relation to something else like a spatial metaphor is structured to our physical experience. Structural metaphors allow us to do much more than just orient concepts, refer to them, quantify them, as we do with simple orientational and ontological metaphors; they allow us to use one highly structured and clearly delineated concept to structure another. (61)
But spatial metaphors are also called Orientational metaphors.
5. Orientaional metaphors organize systems of metaphors… If Happy is Up.. every other emotion must be below it or next to it.
6. Ontological metaphors– entity and substance metaphors.. have several purposes and reflect the purposes they serve.
Inflation as an entity– if it is an entity or noun, it is easy for it to reflect our experiences with inflation.
It allows us to refer to it, identify it, quantify it and so forth (26)
Another one is the mind as a machine or brittle object… which helps us to describe what is occuring in our heads, and the quality of our thinking.
Container Metaphors– Substance and object metaphors, again.
We reflect our bodily experiences, abilities and limitations in our language.
Outside of doing your homework, what else do you have to do?
These help describe visual fields, events, actions, activities and states. (30)
We personify and speak of things as people too.
Inflation is killing me. — Inflation as a person and adversary.
We also apply human qualities to inanimate things, which is called Metonymy or Synecdoche.This is representing a part of a thing for the whole.
Questions
I am still not sure how structural metaphors are different from orientational metaphors. They seem to do the same thing. Orientational seems to be more related to spatial metaphors.. but still the two seem to act similarly.
What is phrasal lexical item?
What is a experiential gestalt? (81)
What happens when one metaphor replaces another due to evolution and/or technology?
Vocab
Motor–activity
Perceptual
Purposive
Gestalts
