一曲长歌非正常情况Is it true that all of us, not just poets, speak in metaphors, whether we realize it or not? Is it perhaps even true that we live by metaphors? In Metaphors We Live By George Lakoff, a linguist, and Mark Johnson, a philosopher, suggest that metaphors not only make our thoughts more vivid and interesting but that they actually structure our perceptions and understanding. Thinking of marriage as a "contract agreement," for example, leads to one t of expectations, while thinking of it as "team play," "a negotiated ttlement," "Russian roulette," "an indissoluble merger," or "a religious sacrament" will carry different ts of expectations. When a government thinks of its enemies as "turkeys or "clowns" it does not take them as rious threats, but if the are "pawns" in the hands of the communists, they are taken riously indeed. Metaphors We Live By has led many readers to a new recognition of how profoundly metaphors not only shape our view of life in the prent but t up the expectations that determine what life well be for us in the future. (from introduction in The Conscious Reader)
"Metaphors We Live By" by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson
Our lection compris chapters 1, 2, 3, and part of 4 of Metaphors We Live By (1980).美女性感照
CONCEPTS WE LIVE BY
Metaphor is for most people device of the poetic imagination and the rhetorical flourish--a matter of extraordinary rather than ordinary language. Moreover, metaphor is typically 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 thinks what we experience, and what we do every day is very much a matter of metaphor.一个人去旅行
But our conceptual system is not something we are normally 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 the lines are is by no means obvious. One way to find out is by looking at language. Since communication is bad on the same conceptual system that we u in thinking and acting, language is an important source of evidence for what that system is like.
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 halt structure 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 ARGUMENT IS WAR. This metaphor is reflected in our everyday language by a wide variety of expressions:
ARGUMENT IS WAR
Your claims are indefensible.
He 正月梅花香又香三国演义内容概括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 u that strategy,项目驱动 he'll wipe you out.
He shot down all of my arguments.
It is important to e that we don't just talk about arguments in terms of
It is important to e that we don't just talk about arguments in terms of war. We can actually win or lo arguments. We e the person we are arguing with as an opponent. We attack his positions and we defend our own. We gain and lo ground. We plan and u 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, defen, counter-attack, etc.---reflects this. It is in this n that the ARGUMENT IS WAR metaphor is one that we live by in this culture; its 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 los, where there is no n of attacking or defending, gaining or losing ground. Imagine a culture where an argument is viewed as a dance, the participants are en as performers, and the goal is to perform in a balanced and aesthetically pleasing way. In such a culture, people would view arguments differently, experience them differently, carry them out differently, and talk about them differently. But we would probably not view them as arguing at all: they would simply be d
oing something different. It would em strange even to call what they were doing "arguing." In perhaps the most neutral way of describing this difference between their culture and ours would be to say that we have a discour 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, namely, ARGUMENT IS WAR, to structure (at least in part) what we do and how we understand what we are doing when we argue. The esnce of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another.居住证明在哪里开. It is not that arguments are a subspecies of war. Arguments and wars are different kinds of things--verbal discour and armed conflict--and the actions performed are different kinds of actions. But ARGUMENT is partially structured, understood, performed, and talked about in terms of WAR. The concept is metaphorically structured, the activity is metaphorically structured, and, conquently, 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 u the words "attack a position."
Our conventional ways of talking about arguments presuppo a metaphor we are hardly ever conscious of. The metaphors not merely in the words we u--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 becau we conceive of them that way--and we act according to the way we conceive of things.
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 process are largely metaphorical. This is what we mean when we say that the human conceptual system is metaphorically structured and defined. Metaphors as linguistic expressions are possible precily becau there are metaphors in a person's conceptual system. Therefore, whenever in this book we speak of metaphors, such as ARGUMENT IS WAR, it should be understood that metaphor means metaphorical concept.
