Is it true that
all of us, not just poets, speak in metaphors, whether we realize it or not? Is it
perhaps even true that we live by metaphors? In Metaphors We Live By George Lakoff,
a
linguist, and Mark Johnson, a philosopher, suggest that metaphors not only make our thoughts
more vivid and interesting but that they actually structure our perceptions and understanding.
Thinking of marriage as a "contract agreement," for example, leads to one set of expectations,
while thinking of it as "team play," "a negotiated settlement," "Russian roulette,"
"an indissoluble
merger," or "a religious sacrament" will carry different sets of expectations. When a
government
thinks of its enemies as "turkeys or "clowns" it does not take them as serious threats,
but if the
are "pawns" in the hands of the communists, they are taken seriously indeed. Metaphors
We
Live By has led many readers to a new recognition of how profoundly metaphors not only
shape our view of life in the present but set up the expectations that determine what life well be
for us in the future. (from introduction in The Conscious Reader)
"Metaphors
We Live By" by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson
Our selection comprises
chapters 1, 2, 3, and part of 4 of Metaphors We Live By (1980).
CONCEPTS WE
LIVE BY
Metaphor is for
most people device of the poetic imagination and the rhetorical flourish--a
matter of extraordinary rather than ordinary language. Moreover, metaphor is typically viewed
as characteristic of language alone, a matter of words rather than thought or action. For this
reason, most people think they can get along perfectly well without metaphor. We have
found,on the contrary, that metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in
thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is
fundamentally metaphorical in nature.
The concepts that
govern our thought are not just matters of the intellect. They also govern our
everyday functioning, down to the most mundane details. Our concepts structure what we
perceive, how we get around in the world, and how we relate to other people. Our conceptual
system thus plays a central role in defining our everyday realities. If we are right in suggesting
that our conceptual system is largely metaphorical, then the way we thinks what we experience,
and what we do every day is very much a matter of metaphor.
But our conceptual
system is not something we are normally aware of. in most of the little things
we do every day, we simply think and act more or less automatically along certain lines. Just
what these lines are is by no means obvious. One way to find out is by looking at language.
Since communication is based on the same conceptual system that we use in thinking and
acting, language is an important source of evidence for what that system is like.
Primarily on the
basis of linguistic evidence, we have found that most of our ordinary
conceptual system is metaphorical in nature. And we have found a way to begin to identify in
detail just what the metaphors are halt structure how we perceive, how we think, and what we
do.
To give some idea
of what it could mean for a concept to be metaphorical and for such a
concept to structure an everyday activity, let us start with the concept ARGUMENT and the
conceptual metaphor ARGUMENT IS WAR. This metaphor is reflected in our everyday
language by a wide variety of expressions:
ARGUMENT IS WAR
Your claims are indefensible.
He attacked every
weak point in my argument.
His criticisms
were right on target.
I demolished his
argument.
I've never won an
argument with him.
you disagree? Okay, shoot!
If you use that strategy,
he'll wipe you out.
He shot down all
of my arguments.
It is important
to see that we don't just talk about arguments in terms of
It is important
to see that we don't just talk about arguments in terms of war. We can actually
win or lose arguments. We see the person we are arguing with as an opponent. We attack his
positions and we defend our own. We gain and lose ground. We plan and use strategies. If we
find a position indefensible, we can abandon it and take a new line of attack. Many of the things
we do in arguing are partially structured by the concept of war. Though there is no physical
battle, there is a verbal battle, and the structure of an argument--attack, defense, counter-
attack, etc.---reflects this. It is in this sense that the ARGUMENT IS WAR metaphor is one
that we live by in this culture; its structures the actions we perform in arguing. Try to imagine a
culture where arguments are not viewed in terms of war, where no one wins or loses, where
there is no sense of attacking or defending, gaining or losing ground. Imagine a culture where an
argument is viewed as a dance, the participants are seen as performers, and the goal is to
perform in a balanced and aesthetically pleasing way. In such a culture, people would view
arguments differently, experience them differently, carry them out differently, and talk about
them differently. But we would probably not view them as arguing at all: they would simply be
doing something different. It would seem strange even to call what they were doing "arguing."
In
perhaps the most neutral way of describing this difference between their culture and ours would
be to say that we have a discourse form structured in terms of battle and they have one
structured in terms of dance. This is an example of what it means for a metaphorical concept,
namely, ARGUMENT IS WAR, to structure (at least in part) what we do and how we
understand what we are doing when we argue. The essence of metaphor is understanding
and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another.. It is not that arguments are a
subspecies of war. Arguments and wars are different kinds of things--verbal discourse and
armed conflict--and the actions performed are different kinds of actions. But ARGUMENT is
partially structured, understood, performed, and talked about in terms of WAR. The concept is
metaphorically structured, the activity is metaphorically structured, and, consequently, the
language is metaphorically structured.
Moreover, this
is the ordinary way of having an argument and talking about one. The normal
way for us to talk about attacking a position is to use the words "attack a position." Our
conventional ways of talking about arguments presuppose a metaphor we are hardly ever
conscious of. The metaphors not merely in the words we use--it is in our very concept of an
argument. The language of argument is not poetic, fanciful, or rhetorical; it is literal. We talk
about arguments that way because we conceive of them that way-- and we act according to
the way we conceive of things.
The most important
claim we have made so far is that metaphor is not just a matter of language,
that is, of mere words. We shall argue that, on the contrary, human thought processes are
largely metaphorical. This is what we mean when we say that the human conceptual system is
metaphorically structured and defined. Metaphors as linguistic expressions are possible
precisely because there are metaphors in a person's conceptual system. Therefore, whenever in
this book we speak of metaphors, such as ARGUMENT IS WAR, it should be understood
that metaphor means metaphorical concept.
THE SYSTEMATICITTY
OF METAPHORICAL CONCEPTS
Arguments usually
follow patterns; that is, there are certain things we typically do and do not do
in arguing. The fact that we in part conceptualize arguments in terms of battle systematically
influences the shape argument stake and the way we talk about what we do in arguing. Because
the metaphorical concept is systematic, the language we use to talk about that aspect of the
concept is systematic.
We saw in the ARGUMENT
IS WAR metaphor that expressions from the vocabulary of war,
e.g., attack a position, indefensible, strategy, new line of attack, win, gain ground, etc., form a
systematic way of talking about the battling aspects of arguing. It is no accident that these
expressions mean what they mean when we use them to talk about arguments. A portion of the
conceptual network of battle partially characterizes file concept of an argument, and the
language follows suit. Since metaphorical expressions in our language are tied to metaphorical
concepts in a systematic way, we can use metaphorical linguistic expressions to study the
nature of metaphorical concepts and to gain an understanding of the metaphorical nature of our
activities.
To get an idea
of how metaphorical expressions in everyday language icon give us insight into
the metaphorical nature of the concepts that structure our everyday activities, let us consider the
metaphorical concept TIME IS Money as it is reflected in contemporary English.
TIME IS MONEY
You're wasting
my time.
This gadget will
save you hours. I don't have the time to give you.
How do you spend
your time these days? That flat tire cost me an hour.
I've invested a
lot of time in her.
1 don't have enough
time to spare for that.You're running out of time.
You need to budget
your time.
Put aside aside
some time for ping pong.
Is that worth
your while?
Do you have much
time left?
He's living on
I borrowed time.
You don't use your
time, profitably.
I lost a
lot of time when I got sick.
Thank you for your
time.
Time in our culture
is a valuable commodity. It is a limited resource that we use to accomplish
our goals. Because of the way that the concept of work has developed in modern Western
culture, where work is typically associated with the time it takes and time is precisely quantified,
it has become customary to pay people by the hour, week, or year. In our culture TIME IS
MONEY in many ways: telephone message units, hourly wages, hotel room rates, yearly
budgets, interest on loans, and paying your debt to society by "serving time." These practices
are relatively new in the history of the human race, and by no means do they exist in all cultures.
They have arisen in modern industrialized societies and structure our basic everyday activities in
a very profound way. Corresponding to the fact that we act as if time is a valuable commodity--
a limited resource, even money--we conceive of time that way. Thus we understand and
experience time as the kind of thing that can be spent, wasted, budgeted, invested wisely or
poorly, saved, or squandered.
TIME IS MONEY,
TIME IS A LIMITED RESOURCE, and TIME IS A VALUABLE
COMMODITY are all metaphorical concepts. They are metaphorical since we are using our
everyday experiences with money, limited resources, and valuable commodities to
conceptualize time. This isn't a necessary way for human beings to conceptualize time; it is tied
to our culture. There are cultures where time is none of these things.
The metaphorical
concepts TIME IS MONEY, TIME 1S A RESOURCE, and TIME IS A
VALUABLE COMMODITY form a single system based on sub- categorization, since in our
society money is a limited resource and limited resources are valuable commodities. These sub
categorization relationships characterize entailment relationships between the metaphors: TIME
IS MONEY entails that TIME IS A LIMITED RESOURCE, which entails that TIME 1S A
VALUABLE COMMODITY.
We are adopting
the practice of using the most specific metaphorical concept, in this case
TIME IS MONEY to characterize the entire system. Of the expressions listed under the TIME
IS MONEY metaphor, some refer specifically to money (spend, invest, budget, probably
cost), others to limited resources (use, use up, have enough of, run out of), and still others to
valuable commodities (have, give, lose, thank you for). This is an example of the way in which
metaphorical entailments can characterize a coherent system of metaphorical concepts and a
corresponding coherent system of metaphorical expressions for those concepts.
The very systematicity
that allows us to comprehend one aspect of a concept in terms terms of
another (e.g., comprehending an aspect of arguing in terms of battle) will necessarily hide other
aspects of the concept. In allowing us to focus on one aspect of a concept (e.g., the battling
aspects of arguing), metaphorical concept can keep us from focusing on other aspects of the
concept that are inconsistent with that metaphor. For example, in the midst of a heated
argument, when we are intent on attacking our opponent's position and defending our own, we
may lose sight of the cooperative aspects of arguing. Someone who is arguing with you can be
viewed as giving you his time, a valuable commodity, in an effort at mutual understanding. But
when we are preoccupied with the battle aspects, we often lose sight of the cooperative
aspects.
A far more subtle
case of how a metaphorical concept can hide an aspect of our experience
can be seen in what Michael Reddy has called the "conduit metaphor."' Reddy observes that
our language about language is structured roughly by the following complex metaphor:
IDEAS (Of MEANINGS)
ARE OBJECTS.
LINGUISTIC EXPRESSIONS
ARE CONTAINERS.
COMMUNICATION IS
SENDING.
The speaker puts
ideas (objects) into words (containers) and sends them (along a conduit) to a
bearer who takes the idea/objects out of the word/containers. Reddy documents this with more
than a hundred types of expressions in English, which he estimates account for at least 70
percent of the expressions we use for talking about language. Here are some examples:
THE CONDUIT METAPHOR
It's hard to get
that idea across to him.
I gave you
that idea.
Your reasons came
through to us.
It's difficult
to put my ideas into words.
When you have a
good idea, try to capture it immediately in words.
Try to pack more
thought into fewer words.
You can't simply stuff ideas into a
sentence any old way.
The meaning is
right there in the words.
Don't force
your meanings into the wrong words.
His words carry
little meaning.
The introduction
has a great deal of thought content.
Your words seem hollow.
The sentence is without
meaning.
The idea is buried
in terribly dense paragraphs.
In examples like
these it is far more difficult to see that there is anything hidden by the metaphor
or even to see that there is a metaphor here at all. This is so much the conventional way of
thinking about language that it is sometimes hard to imagine that it might not fit reality. But if we
look at what the conduit metaphor entails, we can see some of the ways in which it masks
aspects of the communicative process.
First, the Linguistic
EXPRESSIONS ARE CONTAINERS FOR MEANINGS aspect of the
conduit metaphor entails that words and sentences have meanings in themselves, independent
of any context or speaker. The MEANINGS ARE OBJECTS part of the metaphor, for
example, entails that meanings have an existence independent of people and contexts. The part
of the metaphor that says LINGUISTICS EXPRESSIONS ARE CONTAINERS FOR
MEANING entails that words (and sentences) have meanings, again independent of contexts
and speakers. These metaphors are appropriate in many situations--those where context
differences don't matter and where all the participants in the conversation understand the
sentences in the same way. These two entailments are exemplified by sentences like
The meaning is
right there in the words,
which, according
to the CONDUIT metaphor, can correctly be said of any sentence. But there
are many cases where context does matter. Here is a celebrated one recorded in actual
conversation by Pamela Downing:
Please sit in the
apple-juice seat.
In isolation this
sentence has no meaning at all, since the expression "apple-juice seat" is not a
conventional way of referring to any kind of object. But the sentence makes perfect sense in the
context in which it was uttered. An overnight guest came down to breakfast. There were four
place settings, three with orange juice and one with apple juice. It was clear what the apple-
juice seat was. And even the next morning, when there was no apple juice, it was still clear
which seat was the apple-juice seat.
In addition to
sentences that have no meaning without context, there are cases where a single
sentence will mean different things to different people. Consider:
We need new alternative
sources of energy.
This means something
very different to the president of Mobil Oil from what it means to the
president of Friends of the Earth. The meaning is not right there in the sentence--it matters a lot
who is saying or listening to the sentence and what his social and political attitudes are. The
CONDUIT metaphor does not fit cases where context is required to determine whether the
sentence has any meaning at all and, if so, what meaning it has.
These examples
show that the metaphorical concepts we have looked at provide us with a
partial understanding of what communication, argument, and time are and that, in doing this,
they hide other aspects of these concepts. It is important to see that the metaphorical
structuring involved here is partial, not total. If it were total, one concept would actually be the
other, not merely be understood in terms of it. For example, time isn't really money. If you
spend your time trying to do something and it doesn't work, you can't get your time back.
There are no time banks. I can give you a lot of time, but you can't give me back the same time,
though you can give me back the same amount of time. And so on. Thus, part of a
metaphorical concept does not and cannot fit.
On the other hand,
metaphorical concepts can be extended beyond the range of ordinary literal
ways of thinking and talking into the range of what is called figurative, poetic, colorful, or
fanciful thought and language. Thus, if ideas are objects, we can dress them?n up in fancy
clothes, juggle them, line them up nice and neat, etc. So when we say that a concept is
structured by a metaphors we mean that it is partially structured and that it can be extended in
some ways but not others.
ORIENTATIONAL
METAPHORS
So far we have
examined what we will call structural metaphors, cases where one concept is
metaphorically structured in terms of another. But there is another kind of metaphorical
concept, one that does not structure one concept in terms of another but instead organizes a
whole system of concepts with respect to one another. We will call these orientational
metaphors, since most of them have to do with spatial orientation: up-down, in-out, front-
back, on- off, deep-shallow, central-peripheral. These spatial orientations arise from the fact
that we have bodies of the sort we have and that they function as they do in our physical
environment. Orientational metaphors give a concept a spatial orientation; for example, happy
is up. The fact that the concept HAPPY is oriented up leads to English expressions like "I'm
feeling up today."
Such metaphorical
orientations are not arbitrary. They have a basis in our physical and cultural
experience. Though the polar oppositions up-down,in-out, etc., are physical in nature, the
orientational metaphors based on them vary from culture to culture. For example, in some
cultures the future is in front of us, whereas in others it is in back. We will be looking at up-
down spatialization metaphors, which have been studied intensively by William Nagy, as an
illustration. In each case, we will give a brief hint about how such metaphorical concept might
have arisen from our physical and cultural experience. These accounts are mean, to be
suggestive and plausible, not definitive.
HAPPY IS UP; SAD
IS DOWN.
I'm feeling up.
That boosted my spirits. My spirits rose. you're in high spirits. Thinking about
her always gives me a lift. I'm feeling down. I'm depressed. He's really low these days. I fell
into a depression. My spirits sank.
physical basis:
Drooping Posture typically goes along with sadness and depression, erect
posture with a positive emotional state.
CONSCIOUS IS UP;
UNCONSCIOUS IS DOWN
Wake up Wake up.
I'm up already. He rises early in the morning. He fell asleep. He dropped
off to sleep. He's under hypnosis. He's under hypnosis. He sank into a coma.
Physical basis:
Humans and most other mammals sleep lying down and stand up when they
awaken.
HEALTH AND LIFE
ARE UP
SICKNESS AND DEATH
ARE DOWN
He's at the peak
of health. Lazarus rose from the dead. He's in top shape.As to his health, he's
way up there. He fell ill. He's sinking fast. He came down with the flu. His health is declining.
He dropped dead.
Physical basis:
Serious illness forces us to lie down physically. When you're dead, you are
physically down.
HAVING CONTROL
OR FORCE IS UP
BEING SUBJECT TO
CONTROL OR FORCE IS DOWN
I have control
over her. I am on top of the situation. He's in a superior position. He's at the
height of his power. He's in the high command. He's in the upper echelon. His power rose. He
ranks above me in strength. He is under my control. He fell from power. His Power is on the
decline. He is my social interior. He is low man on the totem pole.
Physical basis-
Physical size typically correlates with physical strength, and the victor in a fight
is typically on top.
MORE IS UP; LESS
1S DOWN
The number of books
printed each year keeps going up. His draft number is high. My income
rose last year. The amount of artistic activity in this state has gone down in the past year. The
number of errors he made is incredibly low. His income fell last year. He is underage. If you're
100 hot, turn the heat down.
Physical basis:
If you add more of a substance or of physical objects to a container or pile, the
level goes up.
FORESEEABLE FUTURE
EVENTS ARE UP (AND AHEAD)
All upcoming events
are listed in the paper. What's coming up this week? I'm afraid of what's
up ahead of us. What's up?
Physical basis:
Normally our eyes look in the direction in which we typically move (ahead,
forward). As an object approaches a person (or the person approaches the object), the object
appears larger. Since the ground is perceived as being fixed, the top of the object appears to
be moving upward in the person's field of vision.
HIGH STATUS IS
UP; LOW STATUS IS DOWN
He has a lofty
position. She'll rise to the top. He's at the peak of his career.He's climbing the
ladder. He has little upward mobility. He's at the bottom of the social hierarchy. She fell in
status.
Social and physical
basis: Status is correlated with (social) power and (physical) power is up.
GOOD IS UP; BAD
IS DOWN
Things are looking
up. We hit a peak last year, but it's been downhill ever since. Things are at
an all-time low. He does high-quality work.
Physical basis
for personal well-being: Happiness, health, life, and control--the things that
principally characterize what is good for a person--all are up.
VIRTUE IS UP; DEPRAVITY
IS DOWN
He is high-minded.
She has high standards. She is up right. She is an up-standing citizen. That
was a low trick. Don't be underhanded. I wouldn't stoop to that. That would be beneath me.
He fell into the abyss of depravity. That was a low-down thing to do.
Physical and social
basis: GOOD IS UP for a person (physical basis), together with SOCIETY
IS A PERSON (in the version where you are not identifying with your society). To be virtuous
is to act in accordance with the standards set by the society/person to maintain its well-being.
VIRTUE IS UP because virtuous actions correlate with social well-being from the
society/person's point of view. Since socially based metaphors are part of the culture, it's the
society/person's point of view that counts.
RATIONAL IS UP;
EMOTIONAL IS DOWN
The discussion
fell to the emotional level, but I raised it back up to the rational plane. We put
our feelings aside and had a high-level intellectual discussion of the matter. He couldn't rise
above his emotions.
Physical and cultural
basis: In our culture people view themselves as being in control over
animals, plants, and their physical environment, and it is their unique ability to reason that places
human beings above other animals and gives them this control. CONTROL IS UP thus
provides a basis for MAN IS UP and therefore RATIONAL IS UP.
1. Constraints
