Metaphors We Live By

The authors later went on to write ''Philosophy in the Flesh.'' If you are a stickler for more formal empirical verification, in that tome you will find good discussions about, and references to some empirical confirmation which followed on the thesis developed in this book. In ''Philosophy in the Flesh'', however, the authors inevitably allow more play with their ideological leanings (liberal) which may prove a distraction to some readers who would find ''Metaphors We Live By'' much freer from these ideological musings. Clearly the revelations we find in ''Metaphors We Live By'', transcend ideology, including the authors' ideologies.

The implications of widespread cognitive metaphor throughout our language, culture, and even our sciences, presents us with the landmark tip of an iceberg, whose deeper implications spread far beyond and below the more obviously poetical uses that we typically recognize when we think of the metaphorical. This causes us to rethink everything in ways which I am sure even exceed the authors' scope of speculation, though they have done an excellent job in pointing the way. The ideas developed here, cry out for -- even demand -- further elaboration. This book itself only points to the tip of the iceberg and calls it what it is -- an iceberg. In this job, it proves remarkably easy to read, explanatory, to-the-point, and no longer than necessary. Anyone literate can read and understand it, though exploring and understanding all of its ramifications could easily become a whole science yet to be born.

If you have either a professional or an intense lay interest in cognitive science, this book provides an excellent introduction to ''Philosophy in the Flesh'', though ''Philosophy . . .'' certainly does not provide a conclusion to ''Metaphors We Live By.'' If you find ''Philosophy'' a difficult read, you may try this instead. If you find this book intriguing, then more illuminating speculations lie ahead in ''Philosophy'', but don't expect a grand satisfying conclusion. The authors try for too much there, overshooting themselves and thus occasionally slipping into more ideological speculations where the empirical presentation leaves off. I highly recommend both books, but this one first and foremost. I would give it six stars if Amazon permitted.


Metaphors we think by.   December 6, 1998
 120 out of 121 found this review helpful

Metaphor is usually seen as an aspect of words, a linguistic trick we use to increase the effect of our words. Lakoff sets out to show that metaphors are a fundamental part of our thought processes whenever we try to think abstractly. His book does not provide a rigorous scientific proof, but it does present a lot of evidence in favor of the thesis. However, a full treatment of the issue would take a much thicker and less readable book than this one.

Lakoff gives examples from life for various metaphors, for example, TIME IS MONEY (or TIME IS A VALUABLE COMMODITY), and shows how we use these metaphors in our everyday thoughts and actions ("Spending time", "wasting time", "saving time", etc). He shows how many different ideas can be expressed with simlar metaphors, ie HAPPINESS IS UP / SADNESS IS DOWN, HEALTH IS UP / SICKNESS IS DOWN, and so on.

Lakoff sets forth his case clearly and coherently, and with some of his examples, quite entertainingly. If you want some insight into how we think, buy this book.


Structured Experience   January 18, 2005
 69 out of 69 found this review helpful

After hearing nearly every anthropology professor I've ever had reference the work of Lakoff and Johnson in some way, I decided to try reading this book for myself. I'm very glad I did, because it completely changed my view of language, thought, and truth.

Starting with the (deceptively) simple premise that the way we talk about certain things shapes the way we think about them, Lakoff and Johnson launch into a stimulating deconstruction of what they term "conceptual metaphors", and the complex way in which they interact to structure our experience of reality. These aren't just metaphors in the rhetorical sense though; the authors examine how common ways of speaking and thinking actually reflect a relatively coherent metaphorical system.

For example, you might not think that the statement "He strayed from the line of argument" is metaphorical is any significant way, but it is grounded in the metaphor that AN ARGUMENT IS A JOURNEY, and the assumption that A JOURNEY DEFINES A PATH. Put them together, and you get AN ARGUMENT DEFINES A PATH; a path which can be strayed from. Lakoff and Johnson explore these interactions in great detail, and suggest some fascinating philosophical and political implications.

This book is very readable (nice short chapters) and I highly recommend it if you are at all interested in anthropology, linguistics, or philosophy.


Belaboring the obvious   July 5, 2000
 53 out of 99 found this review helpful

The human cognitive system is predisposed towords catagorizing, both for computational and storage efficiency, it seems. New perceptual and experiential experiences are increasingly encoded not as unique instances, but as links to existing instances, and from that, categories are formed. This is all Cog Psych 100, and as far as it goes, true- perhaps trivially so, at least to today's crop of psychologists.

But not to George Lakoff. Finding himself the aging bad boy of structural linguistics, he, like Noam Chomsky and other refugees from a dying field, has recast himself in the role of a social theorist. The problem is that the methodlogy that served him well in linguistics doesn't fly here.

In the 1960s, linguistics was turned upside down by an influx of new converts who, in the wake of Chomsky, didn't seek to extend existing linguistic theory so much as to replace it with an entirely new field. They weren't interested in descriptions of geographical distribution of fricatives in the Amazon basin; instead, they had an entirely new model that was based around building a universal grammer of thought and mind. They built this field from nothing, quoting each others' works and ignoring historical studies.

This was a period of revolutionary science, and a quite exciting one it was. But in the end, while they contributed a lot to understanding of grammers and structure, their real aim- that of producing a definitive deep grammer of thought- failed. The numbers of new graduate students dropped off as bright young people went into nerosciences, cognitive psychology, philosophy and computer science, leaving the once-young radicals without a mission.

As many of the young radicals were also fond of the far left (see the "Fetschrift for James McCawley on the occasion of his thirty-first or thirty-second birthday" for some hilarious examples) they gravitated naturally to political and social theory.

Problem was they attempted to carry with them the same methodology they used in linguistics. Forget the old stuff, they cried; we're got a new, better theory! New insights, new truths, all better than before.

As you might expect, what they produced instead was, on the whole, historically ignorant and theoretically shallow. Lakoff published parts of what became this book around ten years ago as essays passed around UUNet, and it appears he heasn't done much reading since. He's apparantly completely unaware of the explosion in the fields of political philosophy, choice theory and cognitive sciences of the past two decades.

In the end, Lakoff's analysis is shallow, ahistorical and generally unconvincing.


Unintended consequences...   September 17, 2006
 39 out of 40 found this review helpful

So, I picked up this book awhile ago thinking that it would be a good survey of one part of linguistics. Yes, it is that. BUT, after reading several chapters, I discovered an unintended consequence, or perhaps an unexpected consequence. Since of the several reviews I read, no one addressed this isse, I thought I would.

Simply put: This book has improved my writing and the impact of my writing. Now, I might normally hit upon the perfectly crafted sentence eventually, but this book highlights so many issues in language that I believe it will help sooner and more effectively. Not like a style manual or how-to-write book, but in the context of the metaphor, the subtle implications of the sentence and the inferences readers might make from its construction. This is pretty exciting.

Many reviewers evaluate the book from a far more intellectual perspective than I, but for the more pragmatic of you that think it can have this unintended consequence, it might be just right for you. At the same time, your grasp of this concept will have a much stronger framework and structure bringng happiness to the linguistic engineers in the crowd. And your language will improve with cool words or phrases like "homonymy", "metonymies", or "experiential gestalt". So I am not that literate.

So enjoy, it is a very nice, informative read!