I was very excited to read the first few chapters of George Lakoff’s Metaphors We Live By because last year I read his book Moral Politics and really enjoyed it. Moral Politics applies Lakoff’s ideas regarding metaphors and cognitive science to political thinking and opinion-making.
When I began reading Metaphors We Live By, however, I was slightly disappointed. The main problem, as it appeared to me, was that Lakoff emphasized how metaphors influence how we conceptualize the world around us (which was completely valid), but failed to acknowledge that we use different metaphors to understand certain concepts because of some real-life aspect of that concept. The impression I got was that Lakoff saw metaphors as being somewhat arbitrary and only tangentially related to the concepts they correspond to. Lakoff under-emphasized the extent to which metaphors are as much a reflection of some reality of the concept as a distortion of the concept in it’s entirety.
For instance, we use the argument–as-war metaphor to explain war at least in part because of the competitive aspects of argument and the impassioned feelings of rage that often accompany heated arguments. The metaphor, it seems to me, does not create that impression of the concept of argument, i.e. the impression that arguments are competitive and often heated, but rather the metaphor expresses that impression of arguments.
This was at least the way that things appeared to me after the first two chapters or so. In the third chapter, however, Lakoff acknowledged that metaphors hide certain aspects of the concepts, implicitly saying that metaphors only emphasize one concrete aspect of the concept over another. This seemed to me much better than the tone of the first two chapters which, perhaps in an effort to get his point across, really stretched trying to make clear how metaphors inform our perceptions of concepts.
After finishing the reading, I found Lakoff’s ideas much more agreeable than they seemed to me as I was reading them. The importance of Lakoff’s thought is not that he makes clear the specific dynamics underpinning the relationship between metaphors and our perception of the certain concepts, but rather that he sheds light on the fact that there is a relationship between the two, a fact which he correctly says virtually no one is consciously aware of.
I like an idea and enjoyed reading. Very deep analysis of the chapters and strong personal opinion about the chapters. Very clear that you read and understood what you read. I like that you agree with some part of the book and other one you question. Also I liked that you mention and compare this chapters with other book you read before. Would like to find and read it too. Thank you, interesting to read.
I enjoyed reading your response and your immediate comparison of Metaphors We Live By” to Moral Politics which are both by the same author. Its nice to see that you both agree and disagree with certain points that the authors discuss and explain why you have such a strong opinion on the topic. Your comparison of this piece of work with another by the same author that had to do with very similar topics is both insightful and seems like it allows you to have a better understanding of his work. It sounds like the other book was an interesting read as was this response.
That’s an interesting interpretation of Lakoff’s argument— I thought the same at first, as well. I think that the metaphors came off across as arbitrary perhaps because he didn’t provide context when those phrases emerged. I talked about that on one of the responses that “Time is Money” emerged due to Ben Franklin and the Protestant Work ethic. I think that the expression of the concepts (you mentioned arguments) evolves from socialization and culture, and you are right to believe that the associations we make in our metaphors are not random.
Based on your response, what you’re saying is that Lakoff and Johnson believes that our conceptual system is metaphorical. However, Lakoff and Johnson does place an exception by saying “that our conceptual system is largely metaphorical” (3). By doing that, Lakoff and Johnson does place certain limitations as to how much our conceptual system is metaphorical. Perhaps if you read with the thought that Lakoff and Johnson wasn’t saying all of our conceptual system is metaphorical, you would’ve had a different impression reading the chapters.