Metaphors We Live By

Table of contents

Summary
Quotes
Thoughts

Summary

Experience, Coherence, and Systematicity of Metaphorical Concepts

Most of our fundamental concepts are organized in terms of one or more spatialization metaphors.
There is an internal systematicity to each spatialization metaphor. For example, happy is up defines a coherent system rather than a number of isolated and random cases. (An example of an incoherent system would be one where, say, “I’m feeling up” meant “I’m feeling happy, “ but “My spirits rose” meant “I became sadder.”) -There is an overall external systematicity among the various spatialization metaphors, which defines coherence among them. Thus, good is up gives an up orientation to general well-being, and this orientation is coherent with special cases like HAPPY IS UP , HEALTH IS UP, ALIVE IS UP, CONTROL IS UP. STATUS IS UP is coherent with CONTROL IS UP.
Spatialization metaphors are rooted in physical and cultural experience; they are not randomly assigned. A metaphor can serve as a vehicle for understanding a concept only by virtue of its experiential basis. (Some of the complexities of the experiential basis of metaphor are discussed in the following section.)
There are many possible physical and social bases for metaphor. Coherence within the overall system seems to be part of the reason why one is chosen and not another. For example, happiness also tends to correlate physically with a smile and a general feeling of expansiveness. This could in principle form the basis for a metaphor HAPPY IS WIDE; SAD IS NARROW. And in fact there are minor metaphorical expressions, like “I’m feeling expansive, “ that pick out a different aspect of happiness than “I’m feeling up” does. But the major metaphor in our culture is happy is up; there is a reason why we speak of the height of ecstasy rather than the breadth of ecstasy, happy is up is maximally coherent with good is up, HEALTHY IS UP, etc.
In some cases spatialization is so essential a part of a concept that it is difficult for us to imagine any alternative metaphor that might structure the concept. In our society “high status” is such a concept. Other cases, like happiness, are less clear. Is the concept of happiness independent of the happy is up metaphor, or is the up-down spatialization of happiness a part of the concept? We believe that it is a part of the concept within a given conceptual system. THE HAPPY IS UP metaphor places happiness within a coherent metaphorical system, and part of its meaning comes from its role in that system.
So-called purely intellectual concepts, e.g., the concepts in a scientific theory, are often—perhaps always—based on metaphors that have a physical and/or cultural basis. The high in “high-energy particles” is based orientation is coherent with special cases like HAPPY IS UP , HEALTH IS UP, ALIVE IS UP, CONTROL IS UP. STATUS IS UP is coherent with CONTROL IS UP.
Spatialization metaphors are rooted in physical and cultural experience; they are not randomly assigned. A metaphor can serve as a vehicle for understanding a concept only by virtue of its experiential basis. (Some of the complexities of the experiential basis of metaphor are discussed in the following section.)
There are many possible physical and social bases for metaphor. Coherence within the overall system seems to be part of the reason why one is chosen and not another. For example, happiness also tends to correlate physically with a smile and a general feeling of expansiveness. This could in principle form the basis for a metaphor HAPPY IS WIDE; SAD IS NARROW. And in fact there are minor metaphorical expressions, like “I’m feeling expansive, “ that pick out a different aspect of happiness than “I’m feeling up” does. But the major metaphor in our culture is happy is up; there is a reason why we speak of the height of ecstasy rather than the breadth of ecstasy, happy is up is maximally coherent with good is up, HEALTHY IS UP, etc.
In some cases spatialization is so essential a part of a concept that it is difficult for us to imagine any alternative metaphor that might structure the concept. In our society “high status” is such a concept. Other cases, like happiness, are less clear. Is the concept of happiness independent of the happy is up metaphor, or is the up-down spatialization of happiness a part of the concept? We believe that it is a part of the concept within a given conceptual system. THE HAPPY IS UP metaphor places happiness within a coherent metaphorical system, and part of its meaning comes from its role in that system.
So-called purely intellectual concepts, e.g., the concepts in a scientific theory, are often—perhaps always—based on metaphors that have a physical and/or cultural basis. The high in “high-energy particles” is based on more is up. The high in “high-level functions, “ as in physiological psychology, is based on RATIONAL IS UP. The low in “low-level phonology” (which refers to detailed phonetic aspects of the sound systems of languages) is based on MUNDANE REALITY IS DOWN (as in “down to earth”). The intuitive appeal of a scientific theory has to do with how well its metaphors fit one’s experience.
Our physical and cultural experience provides many possible bases for spatialization metaphors. Which ones are chosen, and which ones are major, may vary from culture to culture.
It is hard to distinguish the physical from the cultural basis of a metaphor, since the choice of one physical basis from among many possible ones has to do with cultural coherence.

Ontological Metaphors

way of viewing events, activities, emotions, ideas, etc., as entities and substances
things like “THE MIND IS A MACHINE” (he broke down) or “THE MIND AS A BRITTLE OBJECT” (he cracked up) are taken as so natural and pervasive in our thought that they usually are taken as self-evident, direct descriptions of mental phenomena
personification - physical object is specified as being a person, allowing us to comprehend a wide variety of experiences with nonhuman entities in terms of human motivations, characteristics, and activities.
metonymy - using one entity to refer to another that is related to it
synechdoche - a special type of metonymy where the part stands for the whole

Afterword Summary

Metaphors are fundamentally conceptual in nature; metaphorical language is secondary.
Conceptual metaphors are grounded in everyday experience.
Abstract thought is largely, though not entirely, metaphorical.
Metaphorical thought is unavoidable, ubiquitous, and mostly unconscious.
Abstract concepts have a literal core but are extended by metaphors, often by many mutually inconsistent metaphors.
Abstract concepts are not complete without metaphors. For example, love is not love without metaphors of magic, attraction, madness, union, nurturance, and so on.
Our conceptual systems are not consistent overall, since the metaphors used to reason about concepts may be inconsistent.
We live our lives on the basis of inferences we derive via metaphor.

Quotes

The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another. (5)

We saw in the ARGUMENT IS WAR metaphor that expressions from the vocabulary of war, e.g., attack a pssotion, indefensible, strategy, new line of attack, win, gain ground, etc., form a systematic way of talking about battling aspects of arguing. (7)

The most fundamental values in a culture will be coherent with the metaphorical structure of the most fundamental concepts in the culture. (22)

every experience takes place within a vast background of cultural presuppositions […] all experience is cultural through and through, that we experience our “world” in such a way that our culture is already present in the very experience itself. (57)

We see this as a clear case of the power of metaphor to create reality rather than simply to give us a way of conceptualizing a preexisting reality. (144)

Each culture must provide a more or less successful way of dealing with its environment, both adapting to it and changing it. Moreover, each culture must define a social reality within which people have roles that make sense to them and in terms of which they can function socially. Not surprisingly, the social reality defined by a culture affects its conception of physical reality. What is real for an individual as a member of a culture is a product both of his social reality and of the way in which that shapes his experience of the physical world. Since much of our social reality is understood in metaphorical terms, and since our conception of the physical world is partly metaphorical, metaphor plays a very significant role in determining what is real for us. (146)

Thoughts

Feels like this work was ground-breaking in 1980 when it was first released, but feels so even now. I had always thought of metaphors as a literary device relegated mostly to poetry and fiction, but this book turns that on it’s head. Metaphors are far more foundational for how we deal with non-physical (and sometimes physical!) concepts, and our metaphors are mediated or rather caused by our culture. The metaphors that Americans use to describe happiness are different than the metaphors Indians would use, and while there might be conceptual overlap, it is only because those separate cultures have ontologies or spatializations that overlap, e.g., both cultures think UP IS GOOD.

I particularly liked the implications of the idea that your metaphor makes your reality, both at an individual level and at a cultural level. I think about the stories I tell at my work about my domain, how I talk about how it should operate and the metaphors I use. Data as water, software and hardware as building infrastructure. But I also use metaphor to describe what we do as a company and as a domain, which is interesting because there is a direct real-world example of what we do, literally what we do. What we do isn’t like a sub shop, or a pizza shop, or a restaurant (most of my metaphors are gastrocentric), it’s a super aggregator who receives, cleans and enriches, indexes, and serves thousands of different publishers data. But things get interesting if you start replacing serves with publishes. So we begin to be another publisher in the line, a republisher. But we might have our own published content. Can we leverage licenses that permit reuse or transposition or editing to create meta-research? Research about research? This is a full on tangent now, but I think about things I need to know more about, specifically our external customers. I have a decent idea of internal customers here, but I need to know more about all customers to make informed decisions.