January 2023

The Book: Metaphors We Live By, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, 1980

Prelude

Written in 1980, this book challenged what was then the conventional view of metaphor – in psychology, linguistics and philosophy – as a sort of minor, poetical flourish that had little to no role in the how people understand language. In sharp contrast, MWLB argued metaphor is central to not only the way humans understand language, but how they conceptualize and experience the world. The suggest that most metaphor is systematic, in that there are root metaphors which structure the way abstract topics are conceptualized. L&J distinguish among three types of metaphoriic systems: Structural (ARGUMENT IS WAR); Orientational (MORE IS UP); and Ontological (IDEAS ARE OBJECTS). They also not that metonymy, while it is referential rather than metaphorical, is systematic in the same way metaphor is.

The book takes a conventional linguistic approach of developing its argument through a corpus of examples provided by informants. It reminded me of my discomfort with the way in which linguists gathered their data – either generating their own examples, or, slightly more principled, using a network of informants to provide a corpus. Even the latter, however, is subject to a number of biases, ranging from selection bias to the great likelihood that the informants are exposed only to a narrow culturally-constrained slice of linguistic behavior. Still, for the purposes of this book, the examples suffice to suggest a revolutionary view of what metaphor is and how it operates; the degree of universality of the claim can be left for later. What is value is the shift in perspective.

I read this book shortly after it came out – as I was doing graduate work in the psychology of language, with a particular focus on metaphor – and the book had a profound impact on me. I remember thinking that I needed to re-think everything I was doing, and that the metaphors I’d been interested in were the least interesting ones. Instead, the kind of metaphors the book addressed – those that were implicit in language and that projected a systematic set of concepts onto a domain (e.g., Argument is War entailing the language of winning and losing, and attacking and defending) – seemed far more important than the one-time poetical metaphors (e.g., the glowing ember of the sun sinks beneath the horizon).

C1: Concepts We Live By

Most of our concepts are metaphorical in nature. Metaphors determine not only how we understand concepts, but they shape how we experience them in everyday life. ARGUMENT IS WAR

C2: The Systematicity of Metaphorical Concepts

While metaphor is a way of understanding one thing in terms of another, one of the key arguments of MWLB is that metaphors are systematic: they provide a whole set of interrelated concepts that provide a model and language for thinking about, talking about, and experiencing something. TIME IS MONEY.

C3: Metaphorical Systematicity: Highlighting and Hiding

The very aspects of a metaphor that highlight some aspects of the domain, can obscure other aspects. Experiencing an argument as war may distract from cooperative and synthetic approaches to resolving differences. IDEAS ARE OBJECTS, WORDS ARE CONTAINERS, COMMUNICATION IS SENDING. This metaphoric system focuses on meaning associated with words, and fails to highlight the role of context, speaker, hearer and history.

C4: Orientational Metaphors

Up to this point the book has focused on metaphors that are projecting structure onto a domain. This chapter calls attention to orientational metaphors such as HAPPY IS UP, SAD IS DOWN and MORE IS UP, LESS IS DOWN. These metaphors are systematic, meaning that one would not expect “My spirts sank” to mean that one became happier, or “Turn the volume up,” to mean making the sound less loud.

This chapter also argues that many of these metaphors are likely to have experiential bases. Thus, MORE IS UP makes sense given that if one gathers more of something, it will make a pile that is bigger and higher, and HAPPY IS UP is consistent with the erect posture of someone in a good mood, versus a slump of depression.

C5: Metaphor and Cultural Coherence.

The most fundamental values in a culture will be consistent with the most fundamental values in a culture. “More is better” is consistent with GOOD IS UP and MORE IS UP; one would not expect “Less is better” to be a cultural value in this case.

C6: Ontological Metaphors

Another class of metaphors are ontological metaphors, that use our understanding of agents, machines, physical objects and substances metaphorically. Thus we can talk of INFLATION AS AN AGENT, and speak of “Inflation backing us into a corner,” or of needing to “combat inflation,” or of “inflation growing.” Similarly, THE MIND IS A DELICATE OBJECT enables us to speak of someone being “fragile” or even “shattered,” and of needing to “handle someone carefully.” Or IDEAS ARE OBJECTS enable us to speak of “grasping” ideas, and transferring ideas (“I got the idea from him”).

C7: Personification

A particular sort of ontological metaphor is where we treat an entity as a person. “Inflation backing us into a corner” is one example. We also speak of theories “explaining” things and facts “arguing against” something. Depending on the type of personificiation we use – for instance, helper vs. adversary – we can draw on a systematic range of personal and behavioral attributes to use metaphorically.

C8: Metonomy

Metonomy is using one entity to refer to something that is related to it, for instance “The [person who ordered the] ham sandwich is waiting for his check.” or “He is in [the profession of] dance.” These are not instances of metaphor, but the use of a one component of a structure or system or causal chain to refer to the whole (synecdoche) or a different part. Metonomy is used as a referential mechanism; metaphor is use to understand or conceptualize. But metonomy is systematic in the same way metaphor is.

C9: Challenges to Metaphorical Coherence

Apparent inconsistencies in everyday metaphorical language often (always?) have an underlying consistency. Consider THE FUTURE IS IN FRONT (“In the weeks ahead of us”) versus THE FUTURE IS FOLLOWING (“In the following weeks.”) This apparent contradiction can be resolved by taking a higher level view: TIME GOES PAST US FROM FRONT TO BACK, and this in turn can be viewed relatively, either treating the subject as stationary with time approaching, or time as fixed with the subject moving forward into it.

C10: Further Examples

Provides other examples of metaphors

THEORIES are BUILDINGS
IDEAS are {FOOD PEOPLE PLANTS PRODUCTS COMMODITIES}
SIGNIFICANT is BIG
SEEING is TOUCHING
…
LIFE is {A CONTAINER | GAMBLING}

Note that both metaphors and idioms are embraced by these conceptual systems

Note as well that not all metaphors are systematic, e.g. we talk about the “foot” of a mountain, but not it’s head, arms, hands or shoulders.

C11: The partial nature of metaphorical structuring

Metaphors are partial: parts are used, and parts are unused. Thus, THEORIES are BUILDINGS, while enabling one to talk about the foundations and structure of an argument, has other elements — like plumbing, shingles, and windows that are not used conventionally. Such unused elements can

extend the used part of the metaphor in a novel way (“These facts are the bricks and mortar of my theory”)
be inapplicable — or at least don’t work well as metaphorical extensions (“his theory has many windows”)
instances of novel metaphor (“his theory is a patriarch that has fathered many children who fight among themselves incessantly….”)

C12: How is our conceptual system grounded?

The claim is that most of our normal conceptual system is metaphorically structured.

Are there any concepts that are not understood metaphorically? The most likely candidates are those tied to our spatial in-the-world experience like up/down, front back, light/dark, in/out

Emergent metaphors and emergent concepts. Claim: the concepts OBJECT, SUBSTANCE and CONTAINER are said to emerge directly from our experience. Similarly, experience with metonymic concepts emerge from our experience with objects/entities.

Basic Claim: We conceptualize the non-physical in terms of the physical

C13: The Grounding of structural metaphors

Structural metaphors are grounded are grounded in systematic correlations with our experience.

For instance, ARGUMENT is WAR is grounded in our experience with fighting, either direct or indirect. “the point here is that not only our conception of an argument but they way we carry it out is grounded in our knowledge and experience of physical combat.

An interesting point is that even if we are talking about RATIONAL ARGUMENT, in which tactics like threats, insults &c are prohibited, analogs of these tactics slip back in (e.g. “it is plausible to assume,” “the work lacks the necessary rigor…”).

This chapter ends with a discussion of ontological metaphors (TIME is a kind of SUBSTANCE; LABOR is a kind of ACTIVITY), and notes how metaphors both highlight and hide things. For example, characterizing labor as a kind of activity opens the door for the notion of leisure.

C14: Causation: Partially emergent and partially metaphorical

Causation is a concept that has an emergent core that is extended metaphorically. Thus in CAUSATION there is a core that includes properties such as

there is an agent
that has a plan
for causing some change of state
in a patient or object
that requires the actor’s energy and the execution of a motor program
that will result in a physically perceptible range in the patient or object

But this core functions as a prototype, in that not all elements need to be true. Thus, we can speak of PHYSICAL CAUSATION — e.g. “the wind blew the tree down” — without there being an intention or plan or a requirement for an agent to use energy to execute a motor program.

2. Contrary to current theory, it is claimed that meaning does not consist of basic primitives, but instead consists of a elements (such as CAUSATION) that are

characterized in terms of family resemblances
gestalts of naturally co-occurring properties
have prototypical cores that are metaphorically extended

C15: The coherent structuring of experience

Wha does it mean to say an experience has coherence by virtue of being structured? L&J claim that the experience is structured by a gestalt, which have various dimensions that emerge from lived experience. Furthermore, when an experience is structured by more than one metaphor, the different metaphors usually fit together in a coherent fashion.

Example: Suppose we are participating in a CONVERSTATION, and at some point, we realize it has changed into an ARGUMENT. What has changed? L&J argue that the conceptual structure of WAR (in ARGUMENT is WAR) has been superimposed onto the structure of CONVERSATION (which as participants, parts, stages, participatory sequence, causation and purpose). When the CONVERSATION becomes an ARGUMENT, the participants have become adversaries, the parts have become attack, defense, retreat, maneuvering, and so on, etc.

C16: Metaphorical coherence

Three increasingly specialized versions of ARGUMENT: ARGUMENT; RATIONAL ARGUMENT; ONE-PARTY RATIONAL ARGUMENT. The latter refers to a (typically) written argument that is conducted against a hypothetical adversary; as such, this version of the concept has some requirements that are not present in the more general concept, such as anticipating possible objections, being clear in one’s presentation, and so on. In this case, other metaphors will be used to elucidate conceptual elements that are not elucidated by the basic ARGUMENT is WAR metaphor.

We can see coherence within a single metaphor by looking at how different metaphors work together: An ARGUMENT is a JOURNEY => A JOURNEY defines a PATH => The PATH of a JOURNEY is a SURFACE supports metaphors like

We have covered a lot of ground
We are getting off the subject
We’re really on to something here

Further more, coherence is exhibited in that different metaphors can function together

At this point (JOURNEY) our argument doesn’t have much content (CONTAINER)
The content (CONTAINER) of this argument proceeds (JOURNEY) as follows

This coherence happens because different metaphors share entailments: e.g. as we make an argument, more of a surface is created (and we cover more ground and develop more content)

C17: Complex coherences across metaphors

As in C16, but applied across metaphors…

C18: Some consequences for theories of conceptual structure

How do traditional theories of conceptual structure explain the grounding, structuring, relationships and definitions of concepts? Two approaches: abstraction and homonymy. Abstraction takes the position that there is a very elementary definition of a concept (e.g. “BUTTRESS”) that can support all uses of the term (e.g. “he buttressed the building,” and “he buttressed the argument.”); homonymy takes the position that there are different concepts for each usage that are either entirely unrelated (strong homonymy) or partially related (weak homonymy).

The rest of the chapter lays out the inadequacies of both views.

Remainder of the book

From this point on the book turns to topics more of interest to linguists, and after that, to philosophy. While those are not without interest, I was not moved to continue the re-read beyond this point.

w/KC: Metaphors We Live By, Lakoff and Johnson, 1980