I found it baffling that-throughout my entire life-I had not once perceived the significance metaphors have over me. If George Lakoff and Mark Johnson are correct in their novel, “The Concepts We Live By,” metaphors could potentially influence “what we perceive, how we get around in the world, and how we relate to other people.” In other words, metaphors dictate the way we live our lives. It’s unnerving that most of us haven’t even the slightest clue over the important role metaphors could play in their daily lives.
Lakoff and Johnson’s idea, that metaphors help us “understand and experience one kind of thing in terms of another,” seems to hold true in many aspects of our lives. A great example of this, as the authors mentioned, is the “metaphorical concept” of “time is money.” This concept helps us grasp why people in our culture establish the meaning of time by intertwining it with their understanding of money. Ever since we were young (especially in this country), most of us had the idea of money being a “valuable” and “limited” resource engraved in our heads (with statements like “money doesn’t grow on trees”). So if we mentally associate the time with money, we will experience them in similar ways.
“Argument is war,” is another excellent example of a “metaphorical concept” that dictates the way we perceive one thing through the lens of another. Although it shockingly makes perfect sense, I’ve never analyzed arguments through the perspective of war. My friends and I often find ourselves in quarrels, and without even realizing it we used strategy to attack and defend our ideas. We would even on occasions get exceedingly aggressive or create alliances -all of which is very similar to war.
With the help of metaphorical concepts, we could better understand why we treat certain things in particular ways; such as perceiving an argument as a battleground or viewing time as an invaluable resource.
-Borys
I have never realized how often we use metaphors either. I agree with you that learning more about metaphorical concepts could aid us in understanding why we say the things we say. In the book the authors mention that if we imagined an argument being viewed as a dance rather than in terms of war, we would not view it as an argument at all. “Argument is war” has been adapted to our culture, therefore it translates to our language. We do not think twice when we say things like “I demolished that argument” or “he shot down all of my arguments” , but when you think about it in a different way it’s absolutely mind-blowing.
The way the authors incorporated the metaphor “time is money” into this piece was very interesting, I thought as well. Like you repeated, it is our culture that has instilled in society this mentality that time can be measured and valued in similar ways to money. Whether it’s by the hours on our paycheck or by one’s timely budget, oftentimes people subconsciously associate time with it’s monetary worth. It makes you think, though, how prevalent money must be to some individuals for them to equate it to something as irreplaceable as time. I find that a sad concept that they might almost be weighed on equal levels. But, as Lakoff and Johnson pointed out at the end of chapter 3, these metaphors are not to be taken literally. It is important to understand a metaphor and the differences between the objects being compared because, as in the case with time and money, they are different in many ways: one is replaceable and one is something that you can never get back once it is gone.