Metaphors We Live By.

George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980.

Sherman said, "War is hell," but the rest of us speak as if "argument is war." We also talk as if "ideas are food" and "up is good." In Metaphors We Live By, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson present a carefully constructed discussion of the way we incorporate metaphors into our language at the most fundamental levels of conception and understanding. They contend that without the structure and concepts that metaphors provide, we would find our understanding of the world severely limited.

The metaphors they highlight pervade daily conversations, but without the conscious knowledge of most speakers. "Up is good," for example, comes from our upright physical position, our awareness of the sky and the ground, and other related concepts. When happy, we stand up and hold our heads high; when sad, we droop and our gaze drops to the ground--obvious once you hear it, but more widespread than you might think. "The market is up today," "support is growing," "are you up for this?," "the sky's the limit," etc. The authors point out that the presence of these deeply embedded metaphors can explain why some statements never ring true--they employ concepts of a metaphor that does not match with our cultural upbringing and the way we see the world working.

In traditional Western philosophies, metaphor belongs in the realm of poetry--useful for evoking specific images or perhaps a vivid emotion, but not important to our conceptualization or understanding of the world. Indeed, objectivism views metaphorical language with great suspicion, as a tool for obscuring objective truth and elevating the "abhorred subjective." On the other side of the traditionally two-sided Western paradigm, subjectivists reject the idea of absolutes and contend that only through metaphor can we discover and describe our uniqueness and individuality, the only truth worth knowing.

Lakoff and Johnson propose a middle ground called "experientialism" where truth depends on an interaction between communal, cultural definitions and an individual's subjective, personal set of experiences. However, before making this assertion, bound to stir disagreement from mainstream philosophers, they lay out a careful, logical and consistent foundation. And they make a very persuasive argument. After reading only a few chapters of this book, I began to see metaphors everywhere. I felt my own personal experience corroborated every bit of evidence the authors offered.

The most fundamental metaphors spring from our physical world--the fact that we have a front and a back, that we have a clear sense of up and down, that we all eat food in more or less the same way. From these facts, we conceptualize aspects of physical experiences. When applied metaphorically, we can transfer those aspects to the non-physical. For example, when we speak as if "ideas are food" we can "digest a proposal," "chew on an idea," and find a fact "hard to swallow." We understand "food" because we eat food--a physical act with specific tangible aspects. By speaking as if "food is thought," we can understand "thought" as if it has similar tangible aspects. Far from obscuring the truth, as the objectivists fear, the metaphor brings with it a ready-made set of related concepts that help us get a handle on an experience that otherwise has no physical aspects for us to talk about.

The authors conclude the book with a chapter titled "Understanding." All the metaphors have but one purpose in the end, to enable our understanding of things we cannot sense. With an understanding of the standard metaphors of our language, we have the tools to possibly invent new metaphors that better serve our needs. At least, that's what Lakoff and Johnson attempt to show us, and I think they make a convincing argument for their case.

REVIEW BY NORA MILLER