Metaphors We Live By Response

Metaphors We Live By – George Lakoff and Mark Johnson

Area 1:

   The excerpts given to us from Lakoff and Johnson’s Metaphors We Live By explore the idea of metaphor as it relates to cultural attitudes, our collective subconscious, and high-inference language. Because our thoughts and actions run through the filter of our own human experience, it is often the case that these thoughts and actions are related to the human experience through metaphor: argument is akin to war, thoughts are delivered in physical conduits, and emotions are associated with orientation. Consequently, metaphor does not exist solely in the realm of semantics and literature; instead, it shapes our interpretation and expectation of our everyday lives.

Area 2(ish?):

   As I read these excerpts, I found the implications of the loaded language associated with our everyday activities very interesting to note. As a culture, why is it that certain situations are associated with violent verbiage (“I shot down his arguments”, “I bit the bullet”, etc.), while others are not? Furthermore, do the thoughts we associate with violent metaphor influence our current zeitgeist, or is the opposite true?

   In response to the idea of war as a metaphor for argumentation, I think its very telling to look at the context of an argument in our world today in order to gain a better understanding of why it might be associated with violent language. In the politically-charged and partisan environment we live in, it would make sense that the ramifications of losing an argument would be similar to losing a “war” (one might lose their sphere of influence, or another party of people might gain power). In this sense, I believe that we, as humans, have assigned this language to the idea of argumentation because our current cultural attitudes point towards public discourse and war having similar implications; our brains love to look for patterns, and they seem to have collectively found one in going to war and arguing with another person.