These are reading notes on Metaphors We Live By by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (University of Chicago Press, 2008 edition). They are adapted from David Drysdale's Moby Diction notes.
1The thesis
Metaphors are more than linguistic flourishes for describing the world. They are conceptual tools that help us interpret, and even build, the meaning of our experiences and interactions.
2Key ideas
2.1Metaphors structure how we interpret the world
Metaphors shape how we experience and understand what is around us. They run through our thinking and guide how we read ideas and concepts. So they shape our perspective and affect our behavior and responses. A metaphor works when it helps us understand some aspect of what it describes. Metaphors help us decide what is real, what is important and how we relate to the world. They let us partly interpret what we cannot understand fully.
We use them to organize and manage experience and to reason about it. In fact we need metaphors to understand complex, abstract concepts. Usually we use concrete metaphors to describe and structure things that are less clearly bounded and nonphysical.
2.2Metaphors form coherent systems
A metaphor means understanding one thing in terms of another. It can be explicit or subtle. Often metaphors sit so deep in our thinking that we do not notice them. We describe an argument as war, or an idea as a building. When one concept gets several metaphors, they usually fit together in a logical way.
2.3Structural metaphors reveal and conceal
A structural metaphor stresses some aspects of experience and hides others. Talking about argument in terms of war hides the fact that an argument can be a cooperative activity. No metaphor captures everything it describes, so each one shapes our view. It reveals and conceals. It can also allow or rule out certain inferences and actions, because it implies a fitting way to relate to the subject.
Examples:
- Arguments are battles.
- Ideas are objects.
- Expressions are containers.
- Communication is sending.
2.4Orientational metaphors organize concepts relative to each other
Orientational metaphors arrange concepts in relation to one another, usually through spatial orientation. They are especially useful for emotions, which have no clear structure of their own. "Happy" is up and "sad" is down. These patterns come largely from deep cultural values.
2.5Metonymy focuses attention
Metaphor and metonymy are separate processes. Metaphor describes one thing in terms of another. Metonymy lets one thing stand in for another. Metonymy also aids understanding, because it lets us focus on a specific aspect of what is referred to.
2.6Novel metaphors open new ways of thinking
Imaginative metaphors offer new ways to think about familiar ideas. They extend an existing metaphor, develop an unused part of one, or supply a wholly new one. In the authors' words, "new metaphors have the power to create a new reality," because they give us new ways to interpret experience and respond to it. They can create new similarities between ideas, concepts or objects that seemed unlike. A shift in metaphor can even inspire cultural and social change.
2.7Experientialism and the objectivist view
The book sets objectivism against two alternatives.
- Objectivism assumes the world contains concrete, knowable objects classified by inherent properties. It holds that an objective reality exists, but humans make errors, so we cannot trust subjective judgment and turn to science to decide what is true. Objectivity is a basic good, and only objective knowledge counts as true. This view dominates Western society today. It offers the comfort of consistency and clarity.
- Subjectivism suggests that our senses and emotions are our best guides to truth.
- Experientialism suggests that truth is relative to our interactions with the world.
3What to take from it
- Notice the metaphor behind a phrase before you accept it. "Argument is war" hides cooperation.
- Pick metaphors on purpose in writing and design, because each one highlights some facts and hides others.
- Use a fresh metaphor when you need people to see a familiar problem differently.
- Treat the claim that only objective knowledge is true as one view, not a given.
4Sources
- Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. Metaphors We Live By. University of Chicago Press, 2008.
See also Narrative Economics on how narratives, like metaphors, produce real-world effects.
Adapted from David Drysdale's Moby Diction notes.