~Tihsiswhat we mean when 'we say that the human conceptual system is
metaphorically
structured and defined.
Lakoff-Metaphors
?
"""--
METAPHORS We Live By
GEORGE LAKOFF and MARK JOHNSON
(i
The University of Chicago Press
Chicago and London
r
? _I . . . .
Preface Acknowledgr. nents
IX Xl
3 7
10 14 22 25
35 41 46
52 56 61
69 77 87
Contents
1. Concepts We Live By
2. The Systematicity of Metaphorical Concepts
3. Metaphorical Systematicity: Highlighting and Hiding
4. Orientational Metaphors
5. Metaphor and Cultural Coherence
6. Ontological Metaphors
7. Personification 33
8. Metonymy
9. Challenges to Metaphorical Coherence
10. Some Further Examples
11. The Partial Nature of Metaphorical Structuring
12. How Is Our Conceptual System Grounded?
13. The Grounding of Structural Metaphors
14. Causation: Partly Emergent and Partly Metaphorical
15. The Coherent Structuring of Experience
16. Metaphorical Coherence
Vll
? II
viii CONTENTS
17. Complex Coherences across Metaphors
18. Some Consequences for Theories of Conceptual Structure
19. Definition and Understanding
20. How Metaphor Can Give Meaning to Form
21. New Meaning
22. The Creation of Similarity
97
106
115
126
139
147
156
185
195
210
223
226
229
239
241
Preface
This book grew out of a concern, on both our parts, with how people understand their language and their experience. When we first met, in early January 1979, we found that we shared, also, a sense that the dominant views on meaning in Western philosophy and linguistics are inadequate-that "meaning" in these tradition~ has very little to do with what people find meaningful in their lives.
We were brought together by ajoint interest in metaphor. Mark had found that most traditional philosophical views permit metaphor little, if any, role in understanding our world and ourselves. George had discovered linguistic evi- dence showing that metaphor is pervasive in everyday lan- guage and thought-evidence that did not fit any contem- porary Anglo-American theory of meaning within either linguistics or philosophy. Metaphor has traditionally been viewed in both fields as a matter of peripheral interest. We shared the intuition that it is, instead, a matter of central concern, perhaps the key to giving an adequate account of
understanding.
Shortly after we met, we decided to collaborate on what
we thought would be a brief paper giving some linguistic evidence to point up shortcomings in recent theories of meaning. Within a week we discovered that certain as- sumptions of contemporary philosophy and linguistics that have been taken for granted within the Western tradition since the Greeks precluded us from even raising the kind of issues we wanted to address. The problem was not one of extending or patching up some existing theory of meaning
23. Metaphor, Truth, and Action
24. Truth 159
25. The Myths of Objectivism and Subjectivism
26. The Myth of Objectivism in Western Philosophy and Linguistics
27. How Metaphor Reveals the Limitations of the Myth of Objectivism
28. Some Inadequacies of the Myth of Subjectivism
29. The Experientialist Alternative: Giving New Meaning to the Old Myths
30. Understanding
Afterword References
~
IX
I
? x PREFACE
but of revising central assumptions in the Western philo- sophical tradition. In particular, this meant rejecting the possibility of any objective or absolute truth and a host of related assumptions. It also meant supplying an alternative account in which human experience and understanding, rather than objective truth, played the central role. In the process, we have worked out elements of an experientialist approach, not only to issues of language, truth, and under- standing but to questions about the meaningfulness of our everyday experience.
Berkeley, California July 1, 1979
Acknowledgments
Ideas don't come out of thin air. The general ideas in this book represent a synthesis of various intellectual traditions and show the influence of our teachers, colleagues, stu- dents, and friends. In addition, many specific ideas have come from discussions with literally hundreds of people. We cannot adequately acknowledge all of the traditions and people to whom we are indebted. All we can do is to list some of them and hope that the rest will know who they are and that we appreciate them. The following are among the sources of our general ideas.
John Robert Ross and Ted Cohen have shaped our ideas about linguistics, philosophy, and life in a great many ways. Pete Becker and Charlotte Linde have given us an appre- ciation for the way people create coherence in their lives.
Charles Fillmore's work on frame semantics, Terry Winograd's ideas about knowledge-representation systems, and Roger Schank's conception of scripts provided the basis for George's original conception oflinguistic gestalts, which we have generalized to experiential gestalts.
Our views about family resemblances, the prototype theory of categorization, and fuzziness in categorization come from Ludwig Wittgenstein, Eleanor Rosch, Lotfi Zadeh, and Joseph Goguen.
Our observations about how a language can reflect the conceptual system of its speakers derive in great part from the work of Edward Sapir, Benjamin Lee Whorf, and others who have worked in that tradition.
Our ideas about the relationship between metaphor and ritual derive from the anthropological tradition of Bronislaw
10. . . -
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/
1
Concepts We Liv. :eBy
Metaphor is for most people a device of the poetic imagina- tion and the rhetorical flaurish-a matter of extraordinary rather than ordinary language. Moreover, metaphor is typi- cally viewed as characteristic of language alone, a matter of words rather than thought or action. For this reason, most people think they can get along -perfectly well without metaphor. We have found, on the contrary, that metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.
The concepts that govern our thought are not just matters of the intellect. They also govern our everyday functioning, down to the most mundane details. Our concepts structure what we perceive, how we get around in the world, and how we relate to other people. Our conceptual system thus plays a central role in defining our everyday realities. If we are right in suggesting that our conceptual system is largely metaphorical, then the way we think, what we experience, and what we /do every day is very much a matter of metaphor.
But our conceptual system is not something we are nor- mally aware of. In most of the little things we do every day, we simply think and act more or less automatically along certain lines. Just what these lines are is by no means obvi- ous. One way to find out is by looking at language. Since communication is based on the same conceptual system that we use in thinking and acting, language is an important source of evidence fot what that system is like. .
3
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CHAPTER ONE
CONCEPTS WE LIVE BY 5
Primarily on the basis of linguistic evidence, we have found that most of our ordinary conceptual system is metaphorical in nature. And we have found a way to begin to identify in detail just what the metaphors are that struc- ture how we perceive, how we think, and what we do.
To give some idea of what it could mean for a concept to be metaphorical and for such a concept to structure an everyday activity, let us start with the concept ARGUMENT and the conceptual metaphor ARGUMENTIS WAR. This metaphor is reflected in our everyday language by a wide variety of expressions:
ARGUMENT IS WAR
Your claims are indefensible.
He attacked every weak point in my argument. His criticisms were right on target.
I demolished his argument.
I've never won an argument with him.
You disagree? Okay, shoot!
If you use that strategy, he'll wipe you out. He shot down all of my arguments.
It is important to see that we don't just talk about argu-
ments in terms of war. We can actually win or lose argu-
ments. We see the person we are arguing with as an oppo-
nent. We attack his positions and we defend our own. We
gain and lose ground. We plan and use strategies. If we find
a position indefensible, we can abandon it and take a new
line of attack. Many of the things we do in arguing are
partially structured by the concept of war. Though there is
no physical battle, there is a verbal battle, and the structure
of an argument-attack, defense, counterattack, etc. - reflects this. It is in this sense that the ARGUMENTIS WAR
metaphor is one that we live by in this culture; it structures the actions we perform in arguing.
Try to imagine a culture where arguments are not viewed in terms of war, where no one wins or loses, where there is no sense of attacking or" defending, gaining or losing
ground. Imagine a culture where an argument is viewed as a dance, the participants are seen as performers, and the goal is to perform in a balanced and aesthetically pleasing way. In such a culture, people would view arguments dif- ferently, experience them differently, carry them out differ- ently, and talk about them differently. But we would prob- ably not view them as arguing at all: they would simply be doing something different. It would seem strange even to call what they were doing" arguing. " Perhaps the most neutral way of describing this difference between their cul-
ture and ours would be to say that we have a discourse form
structured in terms of battle and they have one structured in terms of dance.
This is an example of what it means for a metaphorical concept, Qamely, ARGUMENTISWAR,to structure (at least
in part) what we do and how we understand what we are. . doing when we argue:>The essence of metavhor is I1nd. i:J:: standin ex erienc1ng one kind 0 thin in terms 0 another. It is not t at arguments are a subspecies of war.
Argume~nts and wars are different kinds of things-verbal discourse and armed conflict-and the actions performed are different kinds of actions. But ARGUMENTis partially structured, understood, performed, and talked about in terms of WAR>The concept is metaphorically structured, the activity is metaphorically structured, and, con- sequently, the language is metaphorically structured.
Moreover, this is the ordinary way of having an argument and talking about one. The normal way for us to talk about attacking a position is to use the words "attack a position. " Our conventional ways of talking about arg~ments pre- suppose a metaphor we are hardly ever conscious of. The metaphor is not merely in the words we use---:it is in our very concept of an argument. The language of argument is not poetic, fanciful, or rhetorical; it is literal. We talk about arguments that way because we conceive of them that
way-and we act according to the way we conceive of things . '
. \
. . . . . .
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I: II
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means metaphorical
concept.
~~
6
CHAPTER ONE
2
The Systematicity
of Metaphorical Concepts
Arguments usually follow patterns; thatis, there are. certain things we typically do and do not do in arguing. The fact that we in part conceptualize arguments in terms of battle systematically influences the shape arguments take and the way we talk about what we do in arguing. Because the metaphorical concept is. systematic:, the language we use to talk about that aspect of the concept is systematic.
We saw in the ARGUMENTIS WARmetaphor that expres- sions from the vocabulary' of war, e'. g;, attack a position, indefensible, strategy, new line of attack, win, gain ground, etc. , form a systematic way of talking about the battling aspects of arguing. It is no accident that these expressions mean what they mean when we use them to talk about arguments. A portion of the conceptual network of battle partially characterizes the concept of an argumentt and the language follows, suit. Since metaphorical expressions in our language are tied to metaphorical concepts:in a system- atic way, Wecan use metaphorical linguistic expressions to study the nature of metaphorical concepts and' to) gain an
understanding of the metaphorical nature of our activities. I To get an idea of how metaphorical expressions in every- ~
day language can give us insight into the metaphorical na- ture of the concepts that structure our everyday activities, let us consider the metaphorical concept TIMEIS MONEYas it is reflected in contemporary English.
TIME IS MONEY
You're wasting my time.
This gadget will save you hours.
The most important claim we have made so far is that metaphor is not just a matter of language, that is, of mere words. We shall argue that, on the contrary, human thought
processes are largely meti4pb. Qri&f! . L. . ~Tihsiswhat we mean when 'we say that the human conceptual system is metaphorically structured and defined. Metaphors as lin- guistic expressions are possible precisely because there are metaphors in a person's conceptual system. Therefore, whenever in this book we speak of metaphors. , such as AR- GUMENTIS WAR, it should be understood that metaphor
IV
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I don't have the time to give you.
How do you spend your time these days?
That flat tire cost me an hour.
I've invested a lot of time in her.
I don't have enough time to spare for that. You're running out of time.
You need to budget your time.
Put aside some time for ping-pong.
Is that worth your while?
Do you have much time left?
He's living on borrowed time.
You don't use your time profitably.
I lost a lot of time when I got sick.
Thank you for your time.
commodities to conceptualize time. This isn't a necessary
l
RESOURCE, and TIME IS A VALUABLE COMMODITY form a
single system based on subcategorization, since in our soci-
ety money is a limited resource and limited resources are
valuable commodities. These subcategorization relation-
sl1ips characterize entailment relationships between the
metaphors. TIME IS MONEY entails that TIME IS A LIMITED
RESOURCE, which entails that TIME IS A VALUABLE COM-
MODITY.
Weare adopting the practice of using the most specific metaphorical concept, in this case TIME IS MONEY, to characterize the entire system. Of the expressions listed under the TIME IS MONEYmetaphor, some refer specifically to money (spend, invest, budget, profitably, cost), others to limited resources (use, use up, have enough of, run out of), and still others to valuable commodities (have, give, lose, thank you for). This is an example of the way in which metaphorical entailments can characterize a coherent sys- tem of metaphorical concepts and a corresponding coherent system of metaphorical expressions for those concepts.
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of the way that the concept of work has developed in mod-
ern Western culture, where work is typically associated
with the time it takes and time is precisely quantified, it has become customary to pay people by the hour, week, or
year. In our culture TIME IS MONEYin many ways: tele-
phone message units, hourly wages, hotel rpom rates,
yearly budgets, interest on loans, and paying your debt to I
I I
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8
CHAPTER TWO
SYSTEMATICITY 9
Time in our culture is a valuable commodity. It is a lim-
ited resource that we use'to accomplish our goals. Because
"
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society by "serving time. " These practices are relatively new in the history of the human race, and by no means do they exist in all cultures. They have arisen in modern in- dustrialized societies and structure our basic everyday ac- tivities in a very profound way. Corresponding to the fact that we act as if time is a valuable commodity-a limited resource, even money--'-we conceive of time that way. Thus we understand and experience time as the kind of thing that can be spent, wasted, budgeted, invested wisely or poorly, saved, or squandered.
TIMEISMONEY,TIMEISALItvlITEDRESOURCE,and TIME IS A VALUABLECOMMODITYare all metaphorical concepts. They are metaphorical since we are using our everyday experiences with money, limited resources, and valuable
'--y
I i
The metaphorical
concepts
TIME IS MONEY, TIME IS A
way for human beings to conceptualize
culture. There are cultures where time is none of these things.
time; it is tied to our
?
~Tihsiswhat we mean when 'we say that the human conceptual system is metaphorically structured and defined. Metaphors as lin- guistic expressions are possible precisely because there are metaphors in a person's conceptual system. Therefore, whenever in this book we speak of metaphors. , such as AR- GUMENTIS WAR, it should be understood that metaphor
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I don't have the time to give you.
How do you spend your time these days?
That flat tire cost me an hour.
I've invested a lot of time in her.
I don't have enough time to spare for that. You're running out of time.
You need to budget your time.
Put aside some time for ping-pong.
Is that worth your while?
Do you have much time left?
He's living on borrowed time.
You don't use your time profitably.
I lost a lot of time when I got sick.
Thank you for your time.
commodities to conceptualize time. This isn't a necessary
l
RESOURCE, and TIME IS A VALUABLE COMMODITY form a
single system based on subcategorization, since in our soci-
ety money is a limited resource and limited resources are
valuable commodities. These subcategorization relation-
sl1ips characterize entailment relationships between the
metaphors. TIME IS MONEY entails that TIME IS A LIMITED
RESOURCE, which entails that TIME IS A VALUABLE COM-
MODITY.
Weare adopting the practice of using the most specific metaphorical concept, in this case TIME IS MONEY, to characterize the entire system. Of the expressions listed under the TIME IS MONEYmetaphor, some refer specifically to money (spend, invest, budget, profitably, cost), others to limited resources (use, use up, have enough of, run out of), and still others to valuable commodities (have, give, lose, thank you for). This is an example of the way in which metaphorical entailments can characterize a coherent sys- tem of metaphorical concepts and a corresponding coherent system of metaphorical expressions for those concepts.
III
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1, 1,
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of the way that the concept of work has developed in mod-
ern Western culture, where work is typically associated
with the time it takes and time is precisely quantified, it has become customary to pay people by the hour, week, or
year. In our culture TIME IS MONEYin many ways: tele-
phone message units, hourly wages, hotel rpom rates,
yearly budgets, interest on loans, and paying your debt to I
I I
I!
8
CHAPTER TWO
SYSTEMATICITY 9
Time in our culture is a valuable commodity. It is a lim-
ited resource that we use'to accomplish our goals. Because
"
I
i I
I I
1\
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~
society by "serving time. " These practices are relatively new in the history of the human race, and by no means do they exist in all cultures. They have arisen in modern in- dustrialized societies and structure our basic everyday ac- tivities in a very profound way. Corresponding to the fact that we act as if time is a valuable commodity-a limited resource, even money--'-we conceive of time that way. Thus we understand and experience time as the kind of thing that can be spent, wasted, budgeted, invested wisely or poorly, saved, or squandered.
TIMEISMONEY,TIMEISALItvlITEDRESOURCE,and TIME IS A VALUABLECOMMODITYare all metaphorical concepts. They are metaphorical since we are using our everyday experiences with money, limited resources, and valuable
'--y
I i
The metaphorical
concepts
TIME IS MONEY, TIME IS A
way for human beings to conceptualize
culture. There are cultures where time is none of these things.
time; it is tied to our
? 3
Metaphorical Systematicity: Highlighting and Hiding
HIGHLIGHTING AND HIDING 11
The very systematicity that allows us to comprehend one aspect of a concept in terms of another (e. g. , comprehend- ing an aspect of arguing in terms of battle) will necessarily
-i'- hide other aspects of the concept. In allowing us to focus on
one aspect of a concept (e. g. , the battling aspects of argu-
ing), a metaphorical concept can keep us from focusing on
other aspects of the concept that are inconsistent with that
metaphor. For example, in the midst of a heated argument,
when we are intent on attacking our opponent's position
and defending our own, we may lose sight of the coopera-
tive aspects of arguing. Someone who is arguing with you can be viewed as giving you his time, a valuable commod-
ity, in an effort at mutual understanding. But when we are preoccupied with the battle aspects, we often lose sight of the cooperative aspects.
A far more subtle case of how a metaphorical concept can hide an aspect of our experience can be seen in what Michael Reddy has called the "conduit metaphor. " Reddy observes that our language about language is structured roughly by the following complex metaphor:
IDEAS (or MEANINGS) ARE OBJECTS. \ LINGUISTIC EXPRESSIONSARE CONTAINERS.
COMMUNICATION IS SENDING.
The speaker puts ideas (objects) into words (containers) and sends them (along a conduit) to a hearer who takes the idea/objects out of the word/containers. Reddy documents this with more than a hundred types of expressions in En- glish, which he estimates account for at least 70 percent of'
-"
10
"-. -
the expressions we use for talking about language. Here are some examples:
The CONDUITMetaphor
It's hard to get that idea across to him.
I gave you that idea.
Your reasons came through to us.
It's difficult to put my ideas into words.
When you have a good idea, try to capture it immediately in words.
Try to pack more thought into fewer words.
You can't simply stuff ideas into a sentence any old way. The meaning is right there in the words.
Don'tforce your meanings into the wrong words.
His words carry little meaning.
The introduction has a great deal of thought content.
Your words seem hollow.
The sentence is without meaning.
The idea is buried in terribly dense paragraphs.
In examples like these it is far more difficult to see that there is anything hidden by the metaphor or even to see that there is a metaphor here at all. This is so much the con- ventional way of thinking about language that it is some- times hard to imagine that it might not fit reality. But if we look at what the CONDUITmetaphor entails, we can see some of the ways in which it masks aspects of the com- municative process.
First, the LINGUISTIC EXPRESSIONSARE CONTAINERSFOR MEANINGSaspect of the CONDUITmetaphor entails that words and sentences have meanings in themselves, in- dependent of any context or speaker. The MEANINGSARE OBJECTSpart of the metaphor, for example, entails that meanings have an existence independent of people and con- texts. The part of the metaphor that says LINGUISTICEX- PRESSIONS' ARE CONTAINERS FOR MEANING entails that words (and sentences) have meanings, again independent of contexts and speakers. These metaphors';are:appropriate in many situations-those where context differences don't
? 12 CHAPTER THREE
HIGHLIGHTING AND HIDING 13
matter and where all th~ participants in the conversation' understand the sentences in the same way. These two en-
tailments are exemplified by sentences like The meaning is right there in the words,
which, according to the CONDUITmetaphor, can correctly be said of any sentence. But there are many cases where context does matter. Here is a celebrated one recor~d in actual conversation by Pamela Downing:
Please sit in the apple-juice seat.
In isolation this sentence has no meaning at all, since the
expression "apple-juice seat" is not a conventional way of referring to any kind of object. But the sentence makes perfect sense in the context in which it was uttered. An overnight guest came down to breakfast. There were four place settings, three with orange juice and one with apple juice. It was clear what the apple-juice seat was. And even the next morning, when there was no apple juice, it was still clear which seat was the apple-juice seat. "'-
important to see that the metaphorical structuring involved
here is partial, not total. If it were total, one concept would C actually be the other, not merely be understood in terms of it. For example, time isn't really money. If you spend your time trying to do something and it doesn't work, you can't get your time back. There are no time banks. I can give you a lot of time, but you can't give me back the same time,
though you can give me back the same amount of time. And so on. Thus, part of a metaphorical concept does not and cannot fit.
On the other hand, metaphorical concepts can be ex- tended beyond the range of ordinary literal ways of thinking and talking into the range of what is c~lled figurative, po- etic, colorful, or fanciful thought and language. Thus, if ideas are objects, we can dress them up in fancy clothes,
" juggle them, line them up nice and neat, etc. So when we say that a concept is structured by a metaphor, we mean that it is partially structured and that it can be extended in some ways but not others.
r
In addition to sentences that have no meaning without context, there are cases where a single sentence will mean different things to different people. Consider:
We need new alternative sources of energy.
This means something very different to the president of Mobil Oil from what it means to the president of Friends of
the Earth. The meaning is not right there in the sentence-it matters a lot who is saying or listening to the sentence and what his social and political attitudes are. The CONDUIT metaphor does not fit cases where context is required to determine whether the sentence has any meaning at all and, if so, what meaning it has.
These examples show that the metaphorical concepts we have looked at provide us with a partial understanding of what communication, argument, and time are and that, in doing this, they hide other aspects of these concepts. It! is
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ORIENTATION AL METAPHORS' I
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Orientational Metaphors
15
HAPPY IS UP; SAD IS"DOWN
Dm feeling up. ! . Thatiboosted my spirits. My spirits\rose. You'reinhigh'spmts. Thinkingaboutheralwaysgivesmea lift. I'm feelit1gd@wn. I'm depressed. He's really low these days. Ifell into adepression. My spirits sank.
Physical basis: Drooping posture typically goes along
with sadness and depression, erect posture with a positive emotional state.
CONSCIOUS IS UP; UNCONSCIOUS IS DOWN
Get' up. Wake up. I'm up already. He rises early in the
morning. Hefell asleep. He dropped off to sleep. He's under hypnosis. He sank into a coma.
Physical basis: Humans and most other mammals sleep lying down and stand up when they awaken.
HEALTH AND LIFE ARE' UP; SICKNESS AND DEATH ARE DOWN
He's at the peak of health. Lazarus rose from the dead. He's
in top shape. As to his health, he's way up there. Hefell ill. He's sinking fast. He came down with the flu. His health is declining. He dropped dead.
Physical basis: Serious illness forces us to lie down physically. When you're dead; you are physically down.
HAVING CONTROL or FORCE IS UP; BEING SUBJECT TO CONTROL or FORCE IS DOWN
I have control over her. I am on top of the situation. He's in a superior position. He's at the height of his power. He's in the high command. He's in the upper echelon. His power rose. He ranks above me in strength. He is under my control. He
fell from power. His power is on the decline. He is my social inferior. He is low man on the totem pole.
Physical basis: Physical size typically correlates with
physical strength, and the victor in a fight is typically on top.
MORE IS UP; LESS IS DOWN
The number of books printed each year keeps going up. His
III
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So far we have examined what we will call structural metaphors, cases where one concept is metaphorically
structured in terms of another. But there is another kind of
metaphorical concept, one that does not structure one con- cept in terms of another. but instead organizes a whole sys- tem of concepts with:r-e! ? pecto one another. We will call these orientational metaphors, since most of them have to do with spatial orientation: up-down, in-out, front-back, on-off, deep-shallow, central-peripheral. These spatial orientations arise from the fact that we have bodies of the
sort we have and that they function as they do in our ph~si- cal environment. Orientational metaphors give a concept a
spatial orientation;! forexample, HAPPYISUP. The fact that the concept HAPPYis oriented UPleads to English expres- sions like "I'm feeling up today. "
Such metaphorical orientations are not arbitrary. They have a basis in. our physical and cultural e~perience. Though the polar oppositions up-down, in~out,rete, ,. ,are physical in nature, the orientational metaphors baseC:lon them,'oan vary from culture to culture. For example, in some cultures the future is in front of us; whereas in others it is in back. We will be looking at up-down. spatialization metaphors, which have been studied intensively by William Nagy (1974), as an illustration. In each case, we will give a brief hint about how each metaphoricakconcept might have arisen from our physical and cultural experience. These accounts are meant to be suggestive and plausible, not de- finitive.
14
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16 CHAPTER FOUR \
draft number is high. My income rose last year. The amount of artistic activity in this state has gone down in the past year. The number of errors he made is incredibly low. His income
fell last year. He is underage. If you're too hot, turn the heat down.
Physical basis: If you add more of a substance or of physical objects to a container or pile, the level goes up.
FORESEEABLE FUTURE EVENTS ARE UP (and AHEAD)
All upcoming events are listed in the paper. What's coming up this week? I'm afraid of what's up ahead of us. What's up?
Physical basis: Normally our eyes look in the direction in which we typically move (ahead, forward). As an object approaches a person (or the person approaches the object), the object appears larger.
METAPHORS We Live By
GEORGE LAKOFF and MARK JOHNSON
(i
The University of Chicago Press
Chicago and London
r
? _I . . . .
Preface Acknowledgr. nents
IX Xl
3 7
10 14 22 25
35 41 46
52 56 61
69 77 87
Contents
1. Concepts We Live By
2. The Systematicity of Metaphorical Concepts
3. Metaphorical Systematicity: Highlighting and Hiding
4. Orientational Metaphors
5. Metaphor and Cultural Coherence
6. Ontological Metaphors
7. Personification 33
8. Metonymy
9. Challenges to Metaphorical Coherence
10. Some Further Examples
11. The Partial Nature of Metaphorical Structuring
12. How Is Our Conceptual System Grounded?
13. The Grounding of Structural Metaphors
14. Causation: Partly Emergent and Partly Metaphorical
15. The Coherent Structuring of Experience
16. Metaphorical Coherence
Vll
? II
viii CONTENTS
17. Complex Coherences across Metaphors
18. Some Consequences for Theories of Conceptual Structure
19. Definition and Understanding
20. How Metaphor Can Give Meaning to Form
21. New Meaning
22. The Creation of Similarity
97
106
115
126
139
147
156
185
195
210
223
226
229
239
241
Preface
This book grew out of a concern, on both our parts, with how people understand their language and their experience. When we first met, in early January 1979, we found that we shared, also, a sense that the dominant views on meaning in Western philosophy and linguistics are inadequate-that "meaning" in these tradition~ has very little to do with what people find meaningful in their lives.
We were brought together by ajoint interest in metaphor. Mark had found that most traditional philosophical views permit metaphor little, if any, role in understanding our world and ourselves. George had discovered linguistic evi- dence showing that metaphor is pervasive in everyday lan- guage and thought-evidence that did not fit any contem- porary Anglo-American theory of meaning within either linguistics or philosophy. Metaphor has traditionally been viewed in both fields as a matter of peripheral interest. We shared the intuition that it is, instead, a matter of central concern, perhaps the key to giving an adequate account of
understanding.
Shortly after we met, we decided to collaborate on what
we thought would be a brief paper giving some linguistic evidence to point up shortcomings in recent theories of meaning. Within a week we discovered that certain as- sumptions of contemporary philosophy and linguistics that have been taken for granted within the Western tradition since the Greeks precluded us from even raising the kind of issues we wanted to address. The problem was not one of extending or patching up some existing theory of meaning
23. Metaphor, Truth, and Action
24. Truth 159
25. The Myths of Objectivism and Subjectivism
26. The Myth of Objectivism in Western Philosophy and Linguistics
27. How Metaphor Reveals the Limitations of the Myth of Objectivism
28. Some Inadequacies of the Myth of Subjectivism
29. The Experientialist Alternative: Giving New Meaning to the Old Myths
30. Understanding
Afterword References
~
IX
I
? x PREFACE
but of revising central assumptions in the Western philo- sophical tradition. In particular, this meant rejecting the possibility of any objective or absolute truth and a host of related assumptions. It also meant supplying an alternative account in which human experience and understanding, rather than objective truth, played the central role. In the process, we have worked out elements of an experientialist approach, not only to issues of language, truth, and under- standing but to questions about the meaningfulness of our everyday experience.
Berkeley, California July 1, 1979
Acknowledgments
Ideas don't come out of thin air. The general ideas in this book represent a synthesis of various intellectual traditions and show the influence of our teachers, colleagues, stu- dents, and friends. In addition, many specific ideas have come from discussions with literally hundreds of people. We cannot adequately acknowledge all of the traditions and people to whom we are indebted. All we can do is to list some of them and hope that the rest will know who they are and that we appreciate them. The following are among the sources of our general ideas.
John Robert Ross and Ted Cohen have shaped our ideas about linguistics, philosophy, and life in a great many ways. Pete Becker and Charlotte Linde have given us an appre- ciation for the way people create coherence in their lives.
Charles Fillmore's work on frame semantics, Terry Winograd's ideas about knowledge-representation systems, and Roger Schank's conception of scripts provided the basis for George's original conception oflinguistic gestalts, which we have generalized to experiential gestalts.
Our views about family resemblances, the prototype theory of categorization, and fuzziness in categorization come from Ludwig Wittgenstein, Eleanor Rosch, Lotfi Zadeh, and Joseph Goguen.
Our observations about how a language can reflect the conceptual system of its speakers derive in great part from the work of Edward Sapir, Benjamin Lee Whorf, and others who have worked in that tradition.
Our ideas about the relationship between metaphor and ritual derive from the anthropological tradition of Bronislaw
10. . . -
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Concepts We Liv. :eBy
Metaphor is for most people a device of the poetic imagina- tion and the rhetorical flaurish-a matter of extraordinary rather than ordinary language. Moreover, metaphor is typi- cally viewed as characteristic of language alone, a matter of words rather than thought or action. For this reason, most people think they can get along -perfectly well without metaphor. We have found, on the contrary, that metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.
The concepts that govern our thought are not just matters of the intellect. They also govern our everyday functioning, down to the most mundane details. Our concepts structure what we perceive, how we get around in the world, and how we relate to other people. Our conceptual system thus plays a central role in defining our everyday realities. If we are right in suggesting that our conceptual system is largely metaphorical, then the way we think, what we experience, and what we /do every day is very much a matter of metaphor.
But our conceptual system is not something we are nor- mally aware of. In most of the little things we do every day, we simply think and act more or less automatically along certain lines. Just what these lines are is by no means obvi- ous. One way to find out is by looking at language. Since communication is based on the same conceptual system that we use in thinking and acting, language is an important source of evidence fot what that system is like. .
3
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CHAPTER ONE
CONCEPTS WE LIVE BY 5
Primarily on the basis of linguistic evidence, we have found that most of our ordinary conceptual system is metaphorical in nature. And we have found a way to begin to identify in detail just what the metaphors are that struc- ture how we perceive, how we think, and what we do.
To give some idea of what it could mean for a concept to be metaphorical and for such a concept to structure an everyday activity, let us start with the concept ARGUMENT and the conceptual metaphor ARGUMENTIS WAR. This metaphor is reflected in our everyday language by a wide variety of expressions:
ARGUMENT IS WAR
Your claims are indefensible.
He attacked every weak point in my argument. His criticisms were right on target.
I demolished his argument.
I've never won an argument with him.
You disagree? Okay, shoot!
If you use that strategy, he'll wipe you out. He shot down all of my arguments.
It is important to see that we don't just talk about argu-
ments in terms of war. We can actually win or lose argu-
ments. We see the person we are arguing with as an oppo-
nent. We attack his positions and we defend our own. We
gain and lose ground. We plan and use strategies. If we find
a position indefensible, we can abandon it and take a new
line of attack. Many of the things we do in arguing are
partially structured by the concept of war. Though there is
no physical battle, there is a verbal battle, and the structure
of an argument-attack, defense, counterattack, etc. - reflects this. It is in this sense that the ARGUMENTIS WAR
metaphor is one that we live by in this culture; it structures the actions we perform in arguing.
Try to imagine a culture where arguments are not viewed in terms of war, where no one wins or loses, where there is no sense of attacking or" defending, gaining or losing
ground. Imagine a culture where an argument is viewed as a dance, the participants are seen as performers, and the goal is to perform in a balanced and aesthetically pleasing way. In such a culture, people would view arguments dif- ferently, experience them differently, carry them out differ- ently, and talk about them differently. But we would prob- ably not view them as arguing at all: they would simply be doing something different. It would seem strange even to call what they were doing" arguing. " Perhaps the most neutral way of describing this difference between their cul-
ture and ours would be to say that we have a discourse form
structured in terms of battle and they have one structured in terms of dance.
This is an example of what it means for a metaphorical concept, Qamely, ARGUMENTISWAR,to structure (at least
in part) what we do and how we understand what we are. . doing when we argue:>The essence of metavhor is I1nd. i:J:: standin ex erienc1ng one kind 0 thin in terms 0 another. It is not t at arguments are a subspecies of war.
Argume~nts and wars are different kinds of things-verbal discourse and armed conflict-and the actions performed are different kinds of actions. But ARGUMENTis partially structured, understood, performed, and talked about in terms of WAR>The concept is metaphorically structured, the activity is metaphorically structured, and, con- sequently, the language is metaphorically structured.
Moreover, this is the ordinary way of having an argument and talking about one. The normal way for us to talk about attacking a position is to use the words "attack a position. " Our conventional ways of talking about arg~ments pre- suppose a metaphor we are hardly ever conscious of. The metaphor is not merely in the words we use---:it is in our very concept of an argument. The language of argument is not poetic, fanciful, or rhetorical; it is literal. We talk about arguments that way because we conceive of them that
way-and we act according to the way we conceive of things . '
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means metaphorical
concept.
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6
CHAPTER ONE
2
The Systematicity
of Metaphorical Concepts
Arguments usually follow patterns; thatis, there are. certain things we typically do and do not do in arguing. The fact that we in part conceptualize arguments in terms of battle systematically influences the shape arguments take and the way we talk about what we do in arguing. Because the metaphorical concept is. systematic:, the language we use to talk about that aspect of the concept is systematic.
We saw in the ARGUMENTIS WARmetaphor that expres- sions from the vocabulary' of war, e'. g;, attack a position, indefensible, strategy, new line of attack, win, gain ground, etc. , form a systematic way of talking about the battling aspects of arguing. It is no accident that these expressions mean what they mean when we use them to talk about arguments. A portion of the conceptual network of battle partially characterizes the concept of an argumentt and the language follows, suit. Since metaphorical expressions in our language are tied to metaphorical concepts:in a system- atic way, Wecan use metaphorical linguistic expressions to study the nature of metaphorical concepts and' to) gain an
understanding of the metaphorical nature of our activities. I To get an idea of how metaphorical expressions in every- ~
day language can give us insight into the metaphorical na- ture of the concepts that structure our everyday activities, let us consider the metaphorical concept TIMEIS MONEYas it is reflected in contemporary English.
TIME IS MONEY
You're wasting my time.
This gadget will save you hours.
The most important claim we have made so far is that metaphor is not just a matter of language, that is, of mere words. We shall argue that, on the contrary, human thought
processes are largely meti4pb. Qri&f! . L. . ~Tihsiswhat we mean when 'we say that the human conceptual system is metaphorically structured and defined. Metaphors as lin- guistic expressions are possible precisely because there are metaphors in a person's conceptual system. Therefore, whenever in this book we speak of metaphors. , such as AR- GUMENTIS WAR, it should be understood that metaphor
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I don't have the time to give you.
How do you spend your time these days?
That flat tire cost me an hour.
I've invested a lot of time in her.
I don't have enough time to spare for that. You're running out of time.
You need to budget your time.
Put aside some time for ping-pong.
Is that worth your while?
Do you have much time left?
He's living on borrowed time.
You don't use your time profitably.
I lost a lot of time when I got sick.
Thank you for your time.
commodities to conceptualize time. This isn't a necessary
l
RESOURCE, and TIME IS A VALUABLE COMMODITY form a
single system based on subcategorization, since in our soci-
ety money is a limited resource and limited resources are
valuable commodities. These subcategorization relation-
sl1ips characterize entailment relationships between the
metaphors. TIME IS MONEY entails that TIME IS A LIMITED
RESOURCE, which entails that TIME IS A VALUABLE COM-
MODITY.
Weare adopting the practice of using the most specific metaphorical concept, in this case TIME IS MONEY, to characterize the entire system. Of the expressions listed under the TIME IS MONEYmetaphor, some refer specifically to money (spend, invest, budget, profitably, cost), others to limited resources (use, use up, have enough of, run out of), and still others to valuable commodities (have, give, lose, thank you for). This is an example of the way in which metaphorical entailments can characterize a coherent sys- tem of metaphorical concepts and a corresponding coherent system of metaphorical expressions for those concepts.
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of the way that the concept of work has developed in mod-
ern Western culture, where work is typically associated
with the time it takes and time is precisely quantified, it has become customary to pay people by the hour, week, or
year. In our culture TIME IS MONEYin many ways: tele-
phone message units, hourly wages, hotel rpom rates,
yearly budgets, interest on loans, and paying your debt to I
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8
CHAPTER TWO
SYSTEMATICITY 9
Time in our culture is a valuable commodity. It is a lim-
ited resource that we use'to accomplish our goals. Because
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society by "serving time. " These practices are relatively new in the history of the human race, and by no means do they exist in all cultures. They have arisen in modern in- dustrialized societies and structure our basic everyday ac- tivities in a very profound way. Corresponding to the fact that we act as if time is a valuable commodity-a limited resource, even money--'-we conceive of time that way. Thus we understand and experience time as the kind of thing that can be spent, wasted, budgeted, invested wisely or poorly, saved, or squandered.
TIMEISMONEY,TIMEISALItvlITEDRESOURCE,and TIME IS A VALUABLECOMMODITYare all metaphorical concepts. They are metaphorical since we are using our everyday experiences with money, limited resources, and valuable
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The metaphorical
concepts
TIME IS MONEY, TIME IS A
way for human beings to conceptualize
culture. There are cultures where time is none of these things.
time; it is tied to our
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I don't have the time to give you.
How do you spend your time these days?
That flat tire cost me an hour.
I've invested a lot of time in her.
I don't have enough time to spare for that. You're running out of time.
You need to budget your time.
Put aside some time for ping-pong.
Is that worth your while?
Do you have much time left?
He's living on borrowed time.
You don't use your time profitably.
I lost a lot of time when I got sick.
Thank you for your time.
commodities to conceptualize time. This isn't a necessary
l
RESOURCE, and TIME IS A VALUABLE COMMODITY form a
single system based on subcategorization, since in our soci-
ety money is a limited resource and limited resources are
valuable commodities. These subcategorization relation-
sl1ips characterize entailment relationships between the
metaphors. TIME IS MONEY entails that TIME IS A LIMITED
RESOURCE, which entails that TIME IS A VALUABLE COM-
MODITY.
Weare adopting the practice of using the most specific metaphorical concept, in this case TIME IS MONEY, to characterize the entire system. Of the expressions listed under the TIME IS MONEYmetaphor, some refer specifically to money (spend, invest, budget, profitably, cost), others to limited resources (use, use up, have enough of, run out of), and still others to valuable commodities (have, give, lose, thank you for). This is an example of the way in which metaphorical entailments can characterize a coherent sys- tem of metaphorical concepts and a corresponding coherent system of metaphorical expressions for those concepts.
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of the way that the concept of work has developed in mod-
ern Western culture, where work is typically associated
with the time it takes and time is precisely quantified, it has become customary to pay people by the hour, week, or
year. In our culture TIME IS MONEYin many ways: tele-
phone message units, hourly wages, hotel rpom rates,
yearly budgets, interest on loans, and paying your debt to I
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8
CHAPTER TWO
SYSTEMATICITY 9
Time in our culture is a valuable commodity. It is a lim-
ited resource that we use'to accomplish our goals. Because
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society by "serving time. " These practices are relatively new in the history of the human race, and by no means do they exist in all cultures. They have arisen in modern in- dustrialized societies and structure our basic everyday ac- tivities in a very profound way. Corresponding to the fact that we act as if time is a valuable commodity-a limited resource, even money--'-we conceive of time that way. Thus we understand and experience time as the kind of thing that can be spent, wasted, budgeted, invested wisely or poorly, saved, or squandered.
TIMEISMONEY,TIMEISALItvlITEDRESOURCE,and TIME IS A VALUABLECOMMODITYare all metaphorical concepts. They are metaphorical since we are using our everyday experiences with money, limited resources, and valuable
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The metaphorical
concepts
TIME IS MONEY, TIME IS A
way for human beings to conceptualize
culture. There are cultures where time is none of these things.
time; it is tied to our
? 3
Metaphorical Systematicity: Highlighting and Hiding
HIGHLIGHTING AND HIDING 11
The very systematicity that allows us to comprehend one aspect of a concept in terms of another (e. g. , comprehend- ing an aspect of arguing in terms of battle) will necessarily
-i'- hide other aspects of the concept. In allowing us to focus on
one aspect of a concept (e. g. , the battling aspects of argu-
ing), a metaphorical concept can keep us from focusing on
other aspects of the concept that are inconsistent with that
metaphor. For example, in the midst of a heated argument,
when we are intent on attacking our opponent's position
and defending our own, we may lose sight of the coopera-
tive aspects of arguing. Someone who is arguing with you can be viewed as giving you his time, a valuable commod-
ity, in an effort at mutual understanding. But when we are preoccupied with the battle aspects, we often lose sight of the cooperative aspects.
A far more subtle case of how a metaphorical concept can hide an aspect of our experience can be seen in what Michael Reddy has called the "conduit metaphor. " Reddy observes that our language about language is structured roughly by the following complex metaphor:
IDEAS (or MEANINGS) ARE OBJECTS. \ LINGUISTIC EXPRESSIONSARE CONTAINERS.
COMMUNICATION IS SENDING.
The speaker puts ideas (objects) into words (containers) and sends them (along a conduit) to a hearer who takes the idea/objects out of the word/containers. Reddy documents this with more than a hundred types of expressions in En- glish, which he estimates account for at least 70 percent of'
-"
10
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the expressions we use for talking about language. Here are some examples:
The CONDUITMetaphor
It's hard to get that idea across to him.
I gave you that idea.
Your reasons came through to us.
It's difficult to put my ideas into words.
When you have a good idea, try to capture it immediately in words.
Try to pack more thought into fewer words.
You can't simply stuff ideas into a sentence any old way. The meaning is right there in the words.
Don'tforce your meanings into the wrong words.
His words carry little meaning.
The introduction has a great deal of thought content.
Your words seem hollow.
The sentence is without meaning.
The idea is buried in terribly dense paragraphs.
In examples like these it is far more difficult to see that there is anything hidden by the metaphor or even to see that there is a metaphor here at all. This is so much the con- ventional way of thinking about language that it is some- times hard to imagine that it might not fit reality. But if we look at what the CONDUITmetaphor entails, we can see some of the ways in which it masks aspects of the com- municative process.
First, the LINGUISTIC EXPRESSIONSARE CONTAINERSFOR MEANINGSaspect of the CONDUITmetaphor entails that words and sentences have meanings in themselves, in- dependent of any context or speaker. The MEANINGSARE OBJECTSpart of the metaphor, for example, entails that meanings have an existence independent of people and con- texts. The part of the metaphor that says LINGUISTICEX- PRESSIONS' ARE CONTAINERS FOR MEANING entails that words (and sentences) have meanings, again independent of contexts and speakers. These metaphors';are:appropriate in many situations-those where context differences don't
? 12 CHAPTER THREE
HIGHLIGHTING AND HIDING 13
matter and where all th~ participants in the conversation' understand the sentences in the same way. These two en-
tailments are exemplified by sentences like The meaning is right there in the words,
which, according to the CONDUITmetaphor, can correctly be said of any sentence. But there are many cases where context does matter. Here is a celebrated one recor~d in actual conversation by Pamela Downing:
Please sit in the apple-juice seat.
In isolation this sentence has no meaning at all, since the
expression "apple-juice seat" is not a conventional way of referring to any kind of object. But the sentence makes perfect sense in the context in which it was uttered. An overnight guest came down to breakfast. There were four place settings, three with orange juice and one with apple juice. It was clear what the apple-juice seat was. And even the next morning, when there was no apple juice, it was still clear which seat was the apple-juice seat. "'-
important to see that the metaphorical structuring involved
here is partial, not total. If it were total, one concept would C actually be the other, not merely be understood in terms of it. For example, time isn't really money. If you spend your time trying to do something and it doesn't work, you can't get your time back. There are no time banks. I can give you a lot of time, but you can't give me back the same time,
though you can give me back the same amount of time. And so on. Thus, part of a metaphorical concept does not and cannot fit.
On the other hand, metaphorical concepts can be ex- tended beyond the range of ordinary literal ways of thinking and talking into the range of what is c~lled figurative, po- etic, colorful, or fanciful thought and language. Thus, if ideas are objects, we can dress them up in fancy clothes,
" juggle them, line them up nice and neat, etc. So when we say that a concept is structured by a metaphor, we mean that it is partially structured and that it can be extended in some ways but not others.
r
In addition to sentences that have no meaning without context, there are cases where a single sentence will mean different things to different people. Consider:
We need new alternative sources of energy.
This means something very different to the president of Mobil Oil from what it means to the president of Friends of
the Earth. The meaning is not right there in the sentence-it matters a lot who is saying or listening to the sentence and what his social and political attitudes are. The CONDUIT metaphor does not fit cases where context is required to determine whether the sentence has any meaning at all and, if so, what meaning it has.
These examples show that the metaphorical concepts we have looked at provide us with a partial understanding of what communication, argument, and time are and that, in doing this, they hide other aspects of these concepts. It! is
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ORIENTATION AL METAPHORS' I
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Orientational Metaphors
15
HAPPY IS UP; SAD IS"DOWN
Dm feeling up. ! . Thatiboosted my spirits. My spirits\rose. You'reinhigh'spmts. Thinkingaboutheralwaysgivesmea lift. I'm feelit1gd@wn. I'm depressed. He's really low these days. Ifell into adepression. My spirits sank.
Physical basis: Drooping posture typically goes along
with sadness and depression, erect posture with a positive emotional state.
CONSCIOUS IS UP; UNCONSCIOUS IS DOWN
Get' up. Wake up. I'm up already. He rises early in the
morning. Hefell asleep. He dropped off to sleep. He's under hypnosis. He sank into a coma.
Physical basis: Humans and most other mammals sleep lying down and stand up when they awaken.
HEALTH AND LIFE ARE' UP; SICKNESS AND DEATH ARE DOWN
He's at the peak of health. Lazarus rose from the dead. He's
in top shape. As to his health, he's way up there. Hefell ill. He's sinking fast. He came down with the flu. His health is declining. He dropped dead.
Physical basis: Serious illness forces us to lie down physically. When you're dead; you are physically down.
HAVING CONTROL or FORCE IS UP; BEING SUBJECT TO CONTROL or FORCE IS DOWN
I have control over her. I am on top of the situation. He's in a superior position. He's at the height of his power. He's in the high command. He's in the upper echelon. His power rose. He ranks above me in strength. He is under my control. He
fell from power. His power is on the decline. He is my social inferior. He is low man on the totem pole.
Physical basis: Physical size typically correlates with
physical strength, and the victor in a fight is typically on top.
MORE IS UP; LESS IS DOWN
The number of books printed each year keeps going up. His
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So far we have examined what we will call structural metaphors, cases where one concept is metaphorically
structured in terms of another. But there is another kind of
metaphorical concept, one that does not structure one con- cept in terms of another. but instead organizes a whole sys- tem of concepts with:r-e! ? pecto one another. We will call these orientational metaphors, since most of them have to do with spatial orientation: up-down, in-out, front-back, on-off, deep-shallow, central-peripheral. These spatial orientations arise from the fact that we have bodies of the
sort we have and that they function as they do in our ph~si- cal environment. Orientational metaphors give a concept a
spatial orientation;! forexample, HAPPYISUP. The fact that the concept HAPPYis oriented UPleads to English expres- sions like "I'm feeling up today. "
Such metaphorical orientations are not arbitrary. They have a basis in. our physical and cultural e~perience. Though the polar oppositions up-down, in~out,rete, ,. ,are physical in nature, the orientational metaphors baseC:lon them,'oan vary from culture to culture. For example, in some cultures the future is in front of us; whereas in others it is in back. We will be looking at up-down. spatialization metaphors, which have been studied intensively by William Nagy (1974), as an illustration. In each case, we will give a brief hint about how each metaphoricakconcept might have arisen from our physical and cultural experience. These accounts are meant to be suggestive and plausible, not de- finitive.
14
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16 CHAPTER FOUR \
draft number is high. My income rose last year. The amount of artistic activity in this state has gone down in the past year. The number of errors he made is incredibly low. His income
fell last year. He is underage. If you're too hot, turn the heat down.
Physical basis: If you add more of a substance or of physical objects to a container or pile, the level goes up.
FORESEEABLE FUTURE EVENTS ARE UP (and AHEAD)
All upcoming events are listed in the paper. What's coming up this week? I'm afraid of what's up ahead of us. What's up?
Physical basis: Normally our eyes look in the direction in which we typically move (ahead, forward). As an object approaches a person (or the person approaches the object), the object appears larger.
