A Metaphoric Culture

Lakoff and Johnson's "Metaphors We Live By," argues for some very thought-provoking ideas.  Challenging the widely held belief of the use of metaphor strictly in language.  The idea that metaphors are embedding in our thought processes is an important and intriguing one.  I seek to back up their argument by emphasizing the fact that our language is culturally bound with the inclusion of metaphorical concepts.

They say, "Our concepts structure what we perceive, how we get around in the world, and how we relate to other people" (Lakoff & Johnson).  Perception is reality so our concepts become our truths.  Since the conceptual system largely contains metaphors, the use of metaphors are no longer restricted to just language.  Instead they become a part of living each and every day.  An important distinction to make is the unconscious aspect of the conceptual system.  Most of our decisions we make are automatic and are done without deliberation.  So these metaphors become embedded in these automatic decisions.

Great examples are presented in the reading to back up Lakoff and Johnson's argument.  Going off of one of their examples, I will bring up the saying "Love Is War."  We relate the word love with war, meaning we include certain ideas from each words and combine them.  For example, "I am going to win her over", "I will fight for her love", "Love is a battlefield."  Love Is War is a conceptual metaphor and Lakoff and Johnson say we use these in everyday activity.  Not every culture would consider this as a conceptual metaphor.  Other cultures could relate the word love with journey instead of war so metaphors are not universal in every conceptual system.

 Lastly, both authors bring up the term 'orientational metaphor.'  Orientational metaphors organize a whole system of concepts with respect to one another (Lakoff & Johnson).  This term is contrasted with structural metaphors, which structures one concept with another.  The most common example is the associations of happy~up and sad~down.  But this association does not relate to all cultures.  Happy and down could go together somewhere else which is fascinating.  It is associations like these that show the direct correlation between metaphoric language and culture.

Works Cited

Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. Excerpts from Metaphors We Live By (1980). The Literary Link. Janice E. Patten. 2010. San Jose State University. Web. http://theliterarylink.com/metaphors.html.