METAPHORS WE LIVE BY summary (Linguistics)

The way we think, what we experience and what we do every day have to do with metaphors. Language is the evidence for what our conceptual system is like. For instance, ARGUMENT IS WAR metaphor reflects the structure of a verbal battle such as the attack or the defense in an argument. Consequently, a metaphor is accorded to the way we conceive things, this means “metaphorical concept”. Since metaphorical expressions are linked to metaphorical concepts in a systematic way, we can use metaphorical expressions such as TIME IS MONEY to understand the nature of our activities.

The book deals with many kinds of metaphors.

We can see how a metaphorical concept can hide an aspect of our experience through the CONDUIT metaphor: 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. However, the Conduit metaphor does not fit cases where context is required to determine whether the sentence has any meaning.

The ORIENTATIONAL metaphor that organizes a whole system of concepts with respect to one another, and gives a concept a spatial orientation that is not arbitrary; for example, HAPPY IS UP (it leads to expressions like “I’m feeling up”). Moreover, these metaphors are rooted in physical and cultural experience (“good is up”). It seems that our values are not independent but must form a coherent system with the metaphorical concepts we live by, but not all cultures give the importance we do to up-down orientation, for example, for us ACTIVE IS UP could be passive for others. Only because the basic experiences of human spatial orientations give rise to orientational metaphors, our experiences with objects (and not exactly with mental experience) provide the basis for ontological metaphors as entities and substances that can themselves be viewed as containers, like self-evident (THE MIND IS A MACHINE ontological metaphor). Therefore, we use ontological metaphors to comprehend events, actions (, activities and states: activities are viewed metaphorically as “substances” and as “containers” for the energy and materials required for.

The most obvious ontological metaphors are those that allow us to see something as human, for example, the INFLATION IS AN ADVERSARY metaphor justifies political and economic actions of the government. However, there is a special case where we use one entity to refer to another that is related to it. In the case of the metonymy THE PART FOR THE WHOLE we pick out determines parts which aspect of the whole we are focusing on: THE FACE FOR THE PERSON (we look at a person’s face to get our basic information about what the person is like). Moreover, there exist Symbolic metonymies, which are critical links between everyday experience and the coherent metaphorical systems that characterize religions and cultures.

Time in English is structured in terms of the TIME IS A MOVING OBJECT metaphor, with the future moving toward us. Moving objects generally receive a front-back orientation so that the front is in the direction of motion. Thus, while expressions like “ahead of us”, “I look forward”, and “before us” orient times with respect to people, expressions like “precede” and “follow” orient times with respect to times. Although TIME PASSES US metaphor is not consistent, connections between metaphors are more likely to involve coherence than consistency.

The English expressions are of two kinds:

-  Idioms that fit the metaphor and are part of our everyday speech. For example: IDEAS ARE FOOD/ BUILDINGS/ PEOPLE/ PLANTS/ PRODUCTS/ COMMODITIES/ RESOURCES/ MONEY/ CUTTING INSTRUMENTS/ FASHIONS SEEING as well as LOVE IS A PHYSICAL FORCE/ A PATIENT/ MADNESS/ MAGIC/ WAR are “phrasal lexical items” that function like single words.

-  Simple literal expressions. For example: LIFE IS A CONTAINER/ A GAMBLING GAME, WEALTH IS A HIDDEN OBJECT,  SIGNIFICANT IS BIG, SEEING IS TOUCHING, EYES ARE CONTAINERS FOR EMOTIONS, EMOTIONAL EFFECT IN PHYSICAL CONTACT and VITALITY IS A SUBSTANCE are coherently structured by a single metaphorical concept.

The metaphorical structuring of concepts is reflected in the lexicon of the language. These linguistic expressions that reflect the “unused” part of a metaphor are not literal, but part of the “imaginative” language. In addition to these cases, there are idiosyncratic metaphorical expressions that are not used systematically, such as “the foot of the mountain": “foot” is the only used part of the metaphor A MOUNTAIN IS A PERSON, so little of them are used.

Most of our normal conceptual system is metaphorically structured; that is, most concepts are partially understood in terms of other concepts, such as the simple spatial one, which arises out of our spatial experience. Since there are “systematic correlates” between our emotions (like happiness) and our sensory-motor experiences (like erect posture), these form the basis of orientational metaphorical concepts (such as HAPPY IS UP). We also experience ourselves as being made up of substances, and external objects as being made up of substances. Experience with physical objects provides the basis for metonymic concepts that emerge from correlations in our experience between two physical entities (THE PART FOR THE WHOLE), or between a physical entity and something metaphorically conceptualized as a physical entity (THE PLACE FOR THE EVENT).

Like orientational and ontological metaphors, STRUCTURAL ones are grounded in systematic correlations within out experience. For instances, RATIONAL ARGUMENT IS WAR structural metaphor allows us to understand it as a physical conflict. In addition, several rational arguments contain, in hidden form, “irrational” and “unfair” tactics like intimidation, threat, invoking authority, insult and flattering, instead of the citing of supporting evidence and the drawing of logical conclusions. TIME IS A RESOURCE metaphor is also culturally grounded in our experience and uses TIME IS A SUBSTANCE that allows us to view time as things that can be “used” for various ends. Thus, what is hidden by the RESOURCE metaphors is the way our concepts of “time” affect our concept of “leisure”.

Regarding to “direct manipulation”, CAUSATION is one of the concepts most often used by people to organize their physical and cultural realities, which share features. In addition, the category of causation emerges with this complex of properties characterizing prototypical or “paradigmatic” causations, and it is at once holistic, analyzable and variable. Because of prototypical direct manipulation, we view an object as a different “kind” of thing, for example, from water to ice, so we conceptualize changes in terms of the metaphor THE OBJECT COMES OUT OF THE SUBSTANCE (the ice emerges out of the water). Another way we can conceptualize making is by the SUBSTANCE GOES INTO THE OBJECT metaphor (the water turned into ice). CREATION IS BIRTH metaphor gives us another instance where a special case of causation is conceptualized metaphorically. Finally, the EMERGENCE metaphor is the case where a mental or emotional state is viewed as causing an act or event. Thus the CAUSATION is viewed as the EMERGENCE of the EVENT from the STATE.

Then, the book explains how several dimensions of structure can be seen when two people who are talking to each other. We have six elements of the gestalt: participants (he speakers play a role throughout the conversation), parts (each turn at talking is a part of the conversation), stages (conversations pass through a beginning, a central part, and an end), linear sequence (the participants’ turns at speaking are ordered in a linear sequence with some overlappings), causation (the finish of one turn at talking is expected to result in the beginning of the next turn), and purpose (to maintain polite social interaction cooperatively). Therefore, since the argument remains a conversation,

The participants play the role of adversaries; the parts are attack, defence, counterattack, surrender and victory; in initial conditions each participant defends his position and in the final state the victor has dominance over the loser; defence after attack comes first to counterattack after attack; and the purpose is, logically, victory. These various dimensions are categories that emerge naturally from our experience; it is by means that we need to classify particular experiences in terms of experiential gestalts in our conceptual system to pick out the “important” aspects and remember it.

We cannot always distinguish subcategorization from metaphor: on the one hand, an argument is a subcategorization of a conversation; on the other hand, ARGUMENT IS WAR may be a metaphor because an argument and a war are basically different kinds of activity. Some gestalts are relatively simple (CONVERSATION), but there are also complex gestalts called “metaphorically structured concepts”, structured almost entirely metaphorically (LOVE IS AN EMOTION).

Since the concept ARGUMENT is specialized to RATIONAL ARGUMENT, we have the specialized concept ONE-PARTY RATIONAL ARGUMENT. Among further restrictions placed on this kind of argument are: content (to have enough supporting evidence to overcome objections), progress (to start with generally agreed and move toward some conclusion), structure (logical connections among the parts), strength (it depends on the weight of the evidence and the tightness of the logical connections), basicness (claims based upon subsequent ones), obviousness (not obvious things need to be identified and looked in sufficient detail), directness (it depends on the force of an argument) and clarity (claims must be sufficiently clear for the reader to understand them).

The “metaphorical entailments” characterize the “internal” systematicity of The ARGUMENT IS A JOURNEY metaphor; it has to do with the goal of the argument because since A JOURNEY DEFINES A PATH, consequently, AN ARGUMENT DEFINES A PATH, and if THE PATH OF A JOURNEY IS A SURFACE, therefore, THE PATH OF AN ARGUMENT IS A SURFACE.

We also use the metaphor AN ARGUMENT IS A CONTAINER in order to highlight any of these aspects of an argument. In the JOURNEY metaphor, the longer the path, the more ground is covered, and in the CONTAINER metaphor, the more surface there is, the more substance there is in the container, so the overlap between the two metaphors is the progressive creation of a surface: as the argument covers more ground (via the “journey” surface), it gets more content (via the “container” surface).  For instance, the “progress” aspect of the JOURNEY metaphor and the “amount” aspect of the CONTAINER metaphor can be highlighted simultaneously, resulting in mixed metaphors.

In general, we construct arguments when we need to show the connections between things that are obvious and other things that are not by putting ideas together that constitute the content of the argument. Here, though consistency is not possible, there is a metaphorical coherence among both metaphors based on the fact that they have content-defining surfaces. In addition, since the purpose of an argument is to provide understanding, the metaphor UNDERSTANDING IS SEEING, whose deep points are not obvious, should overlap with the various “argument” metaphors: this carries over to the metaphor AN ARGUMENT IS A JOURNEY. The metaphors come out of our specific experiences and allow us to elaborate concepts, like that of an argument.

Taking into account the fact that there are consequences for theories of the human conceptual system, most of it is metaphorically structured. For example, the “abstraction” view claims that there is a single and very general concept for special cases of the same very abstract concept. However, the “homonymy” claims that there are two different and independent concepts, although they have something in common: an abstract similarity.

-  Inadequacies of the abstraction view: it does not make sense with respect to UP-DOWN orientation metaphors, the less clearly delineated concepts are partially understood in terms of the more clearly ones, and finally, it cannot explain the facts to explain external systematicity as well as external one. Since the abstraction proposal does not have any metaphorical system, it cannot explain why metaphors can mix the way they do.

-  Inadequacies of the Homonymy View: the strong homonymy cannot account for internal and external systematicity, it cannot account for the overlap of metaphors and the possibility of mixing. Finally, since it has no general metaphors like AN ARGUMENT IS A BUILDING, it must view such cases as random. It also has no notion of understanding one thing in terms of another and hence no general metaphorical structuring, it says that all of the concepts for UP are independent concepts related by similarity. Finally, there is no reasonable theory of inherent similarity that can account for any case.

The experiences are defined in terms of other basic domains of experience (like journeys, money and war) that is conceptualized as an “experiential gestalt”, that is, these “natural” kinds of experience are “products of human nature” that may vary from culture to culture. Examples are PHYSICAL ORIENTATIONS, OBJECTS, SUBSTANCES, SEEING, JOURNEYS, WAR, MADNESS, FOOD and BUILDINGS.

Because defining concepts emerge from our interactions with one another and with the world, the concept will be understood in terms of “interactional properties”: things are categorized in terms of prototypes, but there are nonprototypical things; the interactional properties will include perceptual, functional, motor-activity and purposive properties; finally, There are modifiers, called hedges, that pick out the prototype for a category and that define various kinds of relationships to it par excellence,  strictly or loosely speaking, or technically. That is, an object may often be seen as being in a category or not, depending on our purposes in classifying it (categorization is nor random.)

Since we speak in linear order, it is natural for us to conceptualize language metaphorically in terms of space. Thus, this can provide automatic direct links between form and content:

-  More of Form Is More of Content: For example, the CONDUIT metaphor defines a spatial relationship between form and content: LINGUISTIC EXPRESSIONS ARE CONTAINERS. All cases of “reduplication” are instances where MORE OF FORM stands for MORE OF CONTENT.

-  CLOSENESS IS STRENGTH OF EFFECT: For example, the negative has a stronger effect in “Harry is unhappy” than in “Harry is not happy.” There are also examples where the CLOSER the form indicating CAUSATION is to the form indicating the effect: in “Sam killed Harry”, an only single form indicates both the causation and the effect.

-  Therefore, in the metaphor “Closeness is strength of effect”, “closeness” applies to elements of the syntax, while “strength of the effect” applies to the meaning.

-  The ME-FIRST Orientation: it is a consequence of the NEAREST IS FIRST metaphor in our normal conceptual system: we place the word whose meaning is “nearest” in first position.

-  Metaphorical Coherence in Grammar: AN INSTRUMENT IS A COMPANION explains that “the word or grammatical device that indicates accompaniment (“with” in English) also indicates instrumentality”. THE LOGIC OF A LANGUAGE also makes sense given that TIME is metaphorically conceptualized in terms of SPACE.

-  Regularities of Linguistic Form: For example, the use of rising intonation in questions is coherent with UNKNOWN IS UP. The use of falling intonations with statement is coherent with KNOWN IS DOWN. Thus syntax is not independent of meaning.

New metaphors like LOVE IS A COLLABORATIVE WORK OF ART provide coherent structure, highlighting some things and hiding others. For example, the active side of love is brought in COLLABORATIVE WORK and in WORK OF ART. However, in the LOVE IS MADNESS metaphor, there is the ultimate lack of control. In the LOVE IS HEALTH metaphor, the relationship is a patient. In addition, the metaphor entails very specific aspects of these concepts and gives love a new meaning, guiding our future actions. The CHEMICAL metaphor would be to accept it as a fact that no problems ever disappear forever; the PROBLEMS ARE PUZZLES metaphor characterizes our present reality with perceptions, conceptualizations, motivations, and actions that constitute most of what we experience. However, each of the concepts in the metaphor can vary from culture to culture.

“Ontological metaphors” also make similarities possible. For example, that the viewing of TIME and LABOR metaphorically as uniform SUBSTANCES allows us to view them both as being similar to physical resources. “Structural metaphors” in our conceptual system also induce similarities. Thus, the IDEAS ARE FOOD metaphor is based partly on the CONDUIT metaphor, according to which IDEAS ARE OBJECTS. It also assumes the MIND IS A CONTAINER metaphor, which establishes a similarity between the mind and the body (together with the CONDUIT metaphor, we get a complex metaphor in which IDEAS ARE OBJECTS THAT COME INTO THE MIND are objects that come into the body). The view that “ideas are objects” is a projection upon mental phenomena, whereas the view that “the mind is a container” is a projection with in-out orientation. Finally, the metaphor PROBLEMS ARE PRECIPITATES IN A CHEMICAL SOLUTION is based on the conventional metaphor PROBLEMS ARE OBJECTS.

Another example of the similarities created by a new metaphor can be seen in LOVE IS A COLLABORATIVE WORK OF ART, that hides those love experiences that fit the LOVE IS WAR metaphor (“She is my latest conquest”) because there is no consistent overlap possible between the two metaphors. Moreover, by virtue of given coherent structure to a range of our experiences, the metaphor creates similarities of a “new kind”.

As I have said, new metaphors can define reality through a coherent network of entailments that highlight some features of reality and hide others, but what is at issue is not the truth or falsity of a metaphor but “the perceptions that follow from it and the actions that are sanctioned by it”. We base our physical and social actions on what we take to be true. In our daily lives, truth is relative to the normal way we understand the world by projecting orientation and entity structure onto it.

In making true a statement, we make a choice of categories because we have some reason for focusing on certain properties and downplaying others: Perceptual (based on the conception of the object), motor activity (based on the nature of the motor interactions with objects), functional (based on our conception of the functions of the object), and purposive (based on the uses we can make of an object in a given situation).These natural dimensions include “participants”, “parts”, “stages”, “linear sequence”, “purpose”, and “causation.” This shows that the truth of a statement will always be relative to the way the category is understood for our purposes in a given context.

Like metaphors, myths are necessary for making sense of what goes on around us, so we often take the myths of our culture as truths (although myths and metaphors cannot be taken seriously because they are not objectively true). The myth of objectivism says that the world is made up of objects that have independent properties, so we understand the objects in our world in terms of categories and concepts that correspond to inherent properties and to the relationships among the objects. Since there is an objective reality, a scientific methodology allows us to achieve understanding from a universally point of view; we also need words whose meanings are clear to describe reality correctly and to make statements that can be judged objectively to be true or false. Moreover, metaphors and figurative language should be avoided in speaking objectively, since they do not fit reality in any obvious way: to be subjective is to be irrational and to give in to the emotions.

Otherwise, the myth of subjectivism says that our own senses and intuitions are our best guides for action, so the most important things are our feeling, aesthetic sensibilities, moral practices, and spiritual awareness. That’s why metaphor is necessary for expressing the most personally significant aspects of our experience. Moreover, objectivity can be unfair and inhuman. Despite everything, objectivism and subjectivism need each other in order to exist. However, the fear of metaphor and rhetoric in the empiricist tradition is a fear of subjectivism (to use words metaphorically lead us toward illusion). As science became more powerful, reason and technology had separated man from himself and his natural environment, so the romantics saw poetry and art as a way for man to recover his lost humanity. Since imagination involves metaphorical thought, metaphor is thus “imaginative rationality”; truth is therefore not absolute. All of the standard positions are based on the myth of objectivism, while our account of metaphor is inconsistent with it. The objectivist view assign to each sentence an “objective meaning” (a person understands the objective meaning if he understands the conditions under which it would be true or false); this is reminiscent of the CONDUIT metaphor, where “the meaning is right there in the words.”

Since we speak in terms of conditions of satisfaction, meaning can be independent of particular context of use, and compositional, having to do with the “Building-Block Theory”, that is, “the world is made up of definable objects and clearly delineated inherent properties and relations.” Furthermore, objectivism permits ontological relativity without human understanding, and words and sentences can be readily looked upon as objects which have relation to one another (depending upon their building-block structure and their inherent properties).

The objectivist sees all metaphors as cases of indirect meaning where all sentences containing metaphors have objective meaning. It includes two kinds of understanding: direct and indirect.

Regarding to conventional metaphors, such as LOVE IS A JOURNEY, objectivist must claim that love is sufficiently clearly defined in terms of these inherent properties. However, since all objectivist accounts require inherent properties, they fail to give a correct version of how we conceptualize the world. Therefore, objectivist philosophy is empirically incorrect in that it makes false predictions about language, truth, understanding and the human conceptual system.

Continental philosophy, listed as “café phenomenology” says that meaning is private, cannot be naturally or adequately represented, and has no natural structure; that experience is purely holistic, and that context is unstructured.

The myth of subjectivism is focused on the challenge to overcome the alienation that results from viewing man as separate from his environment, whereas the experientialist myth takes the perspective of man as part of his environment, so it provides a richer perspective on areas of our experience in our everyday such as interpersonal communication and mutual understanding, self-understanding, rituals, aesthetic experience and politics. To summarize, the fundamental concern of the myth of objectivism is the world external to the individual: there are real things existing independently of us. Truth is always relative to understanding, which is based on a nonuniversal conceptual system. However, what is significant for subjectivism depends on my past experiences, values, feelings, and intuitive insights; meaning give experience new meaning and to create new realities.