2003: George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By
In this book, Lakoff and Johnson show that we don’t just talk, but also think in metaphors. We’ve all heard the phrase “time is money,” right? Well, this goes hand in hand with similar references to saving/wasting/running out of time, and so it emphasizes that, within modern industrial culture, we often think of time as a commodity rather than an abstract concept.
What Lakoff and Johnson show, then, is that metaphors aren’t just used for poetic effect. The same goes for metonymy, which is a type of substitution—e.g. calling a painting “a Picasso,” which swaps the producer (the artist) for the product (the artwork). Metaphors and metonymy are so much a part of language that we often don’t notice them—we may not even realize that we’re using them—but, as Lakoff and Johnson show, they’re everywhere.
Lakoff and Johnson outline different types of metaphor, one of which is “orientational”—referring to distance, depth and positioning not in a literal sense (“look up there”) but a metaphorical one. Can you come up with any examples? (Hint: think of words like up/down, deep/shallow, front/back etc.)
What motives might underlie the use of metonymy? Think about some of Lakoff and Johnson’s examples: what’s the purpose of using the term “a Picasso”? What effects does this produce?