George Lakoff and Mark Johnsen (2003) Metaphors we live
by. London: The university of Chicago press.
Noter om layout:
- Sidetall øverst
- Et par figurer slettet
- Referanser til slutt
Innholdsfortegnelse i Word:
George Lakoff and Mark Johnsen (2003) Metaphors we live by. London: The university of
Chicago press. ......................................................................................................................1
Noter om layout:...................................................................................................................1
Innholdsfortegnelse i Word:.................................................................................................1
Contents................................................................................................................................4
Acknowledgments................................................................................................................6
1. Concepts We Live By.....................................................................................................8
2. The Systematicity of Metaphorical Concepts ...............................................................11
3. Metaphorical Systematicity: Highlighting and Hiding.................................................13
4. Orientational Metaphors.................................................................................................16
5. Metaphor and Cultural Coherence .................................................................................21
6 Ontological Metaphors...................................................................................................23
7. Personification................................................................................................................28
8. Metonymy.......................................................................................................................29
9. Challenges to Metaphorical Coherence ........................................................................34
10. Some Further Examples ...............................................................................................37
11. The Partial Nature of Metaphorical Structuring.........................................................41
12. How Is Our Conceptual System Grounded?...............................................................44
13. The Grounding of Structural Metaphors......................................................................48
14. Causation: Partly Emergent and Partly Metaphorical..................................................54
15 The Coherent Structuring of Experience .....................................................................59
16. Metaphorical Coherence.............................................................................................66
17.Complex Coherences across Metaphors......................................................................73
18. Some Consequences for Theories of Conceptual Structure.........................................79
19 Definition and Understanding......................................................................................85
20. How Metaphor Can Give Meaning to Form...............................................................92
21. New Meaning............................................................................................................102
22. The Creation of Similarity........................................................................................107
23. Metaphor, Truth, and Action....................................................................................114
24. Truth...........................................................................................................................116
25. The Myths of Objectivism and Subjectivism...........................................................133
26. The Myth of Objectivism in Western Philosophy and Linguistics ..........................140
27. How Metaphor Reveals the Limitations of the Myth of Objectivism........................149
28. Some Inadequacies of the Myth of Subjectivism.....................................................158
29. The Experientialist Alternative: Giving New Meaning to the Old Myths .................161
30. Understanding...........................................................................................................163
Afterword .........................................................................................................................168
References........................................................................................................................169
Afterword, 2003 ...............................................................................................................170
References........................................................................................................................191
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
1980 by The University of Chicago
Afterword © 2003 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. Published 2003
Printed in the United States of America
12 II 1009080706050403 12 3 4 5
ISBN: 0-226-46801-1 (paperback)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lakotl, George.
Metaphors we live hy / George I.akoff and Mark Johnson. p. cm.
Originally published: Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1980.
Includes hihliographical references.
ISBN 0-226-4680 1-1 (phk.: alk. paper)
1. Language and languages---Philosophy. 2. Metaphor. 3. Concepts. 4. Truth. I. Johnson, Mark, 1949-11. Ti0e.
PI06 .1.235 2003 401--dc2I
((2003044774))
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard tir Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for
Printed Library Materials. ANSI 7,39.48— 1992.
Much of the material in all or parts of chapters I through 5, 9 through 12, 14, 18, and 21 originally appeared in the article "Conceptual Metaphor in Everyday
Language," Journal of Philosophy 77, no. 8 (August 1980) : 453-86, and is reprinted here with the kind permission of the editors of the Journal of Philosophy.
For Andy and The Gherkin
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
ix
xi
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
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
vii
ISBN 0-226-46801-1
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 traditions has very little to do with what
people find ineaningfrrl in their lives.
We were brought together by a joint 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 evidence showing that metaphor is
pervasive in everyday language and thought—evidence that did not fit any contemporary
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 assumptions 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
((ix))
((x))
but of revising central assumptions in the Western philosophical 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((
((Xi))
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 appreciation for the way people create
coherence in their lives.
Charles Fillmore's work on frame semantics, Terry Winograd's ideas about knowledgerepresentation
systems, and Roger Schank's conception of scripts provided the basis for
George's original conception of linguistic 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
((xii))
Malinowski, Claude Levi-Strauss, Victor Turner, Clifford Geertz, and others.
Our ideas about the way our conceptual system is shaped by our constant successful
functioning in the physical and cultural environment come partly from the tradition of research
in human development begun by Jean Piaget and partly from the tradition in
ecological psychology growing out of the work of J. J. Gibson and James Jenkins, particularly
as represented in the work of Robert Shaw, Michael Turvey, and others.
Our views about the nature of the human sciences have been significantly influenced by
Paul Ricoeur, Robert McCauley, and the Continental tradition in philosophy.
Sandra McMorris Johnson, James Melchert, Newton and Helen Harrison, and David and
Ellie Antin have enabled us to see the common thread in aesthetic experience and other
aspects of our experience.
Don Arbitblit has focused our attention on the political and economic implications of our
ideas.
Y. C. Chiang has allowed us to see the relationship between bodily experience and modes
of viewing oneself and the world.
We also owe a very important debt to those contemporary figures who have worked out in
great detail the philosophical ideas we are reacting against. We respect the work of Richard
Montague, Saul Kripke, David Lewis, Donald Davidson, and others as important
contributions to the traditional Western conceptions of meaning and truth. It is their
clarification of these traditional philosophical concepts that has enabled us to see where we
diverge from the tradi-tion and where we preserve elements of it.
Our claims rest largely on the evidence of linguistic examples. Many if not most of these
have come out of discussions with colleagues, students, and friends. John Robert Ross, in
particular, has provided a steady stream of examples via phone calls and postcards. The
bulk of the examples in chapters 16 and 17 came from Claudia Brug-man, who also gave
us invaluable assistance in the preparalion
of the manuscript. Other examples have come from )on Arbitblit, George Bergman,
Dwight Bolinger, Ann Iiorkin, Matthew Bronson, Clifford Hill, D. K. Houlgate Ill, Dennis
Love, Tom Mandel, John Manley-Buser, Monica Macauley, James D. McCawley, William
Nagy, Reza Nilipoor, Geoff Nunberg, Margaret Rader, Michael Reddy, Ron Silliman, Eve
Sweetser, Marta Tobey, Karl Zimmer, as well as various students at the University of
California, Berkeley, and at the San Francisco Art Institute.
Many of the individual ideas in this work have emerged from informal discussions. We
would particularly like to thank Jay Atlas, Paul Bennaceraf, Betsy Brandt, Dick Brooks, Eve
Clark, Herb Clark, J. W. Coffman, Alan Rundes, Glenn Erickson, Charles Fillmore, James
Geiser, Leanne Hinton, Paul Kay, Les Lamport, David Lewis, George McClure, George Rand,
John Searle, Dan Slobin, Steve Tainer, Len Talmy, Elizabeth Warren, and Bob Wilensky.
((3))
1. Concepts We Live By
Metaphor is for most people a device of the poetic imagination and the rhetorical flourish—a
matter of extraordinary rather than ordinary language. Moreover, metaphor is typieully
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 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 these lines are is by no means obvious. 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 for what that system is
like.
((4))
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 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 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 arguments in terms of war. We can
actually win or lose arguments. We see the person we are arguing with as an opponent. 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
ARGUMENT IS 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
((5))
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 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 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 culture 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, 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 essence of metaphor is under-standing and experiencing one kind of
thing in terms of another. It is not that arguments are a subspecies of war. Arguments and
wars are different kinds of things—verbal discourse 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, consequently, 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 arguments 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.
((6))
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 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 precisely because 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.
((7))
2. The Systematicity of Metaphorical Concepts
Arguments usually follow patterns; that is, there are certain things we typically do and do
not do in arguing. The fact Iliac we in part conceptualize arguments in terms of battle
Mystematically 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 ARGUMENT IS WAR metaphor that expressions 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
argument, and the language follows suit. Since metaphorical expressions in our language
are tied to metaphorical concepts in a systematic way, we can use metaphorical linguistic
expressions to study the nature of metaphorical concepts and to gain an understanding of
the metaphorical nature of our activities.
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 TIME IS MONEY as it is reflected in contemporary English.
TIME IS MONEY
You're wasting my time.
This gadget will save you hours.
((8))
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.
Time in our culture is a valuable commodity. It is a limited resource that we use to
accomplish our goals. Because of the way that the concept of work has developed in modern
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 MONEY in many ways: tele-phone message units, hourly wages, hotel room
rates, yearly budgets, interest on loans, and paying your debt to 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 industrialized societies and structure
our basic everyday activities 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.
TIME IS MONEY, TIME IS A LIMITED RESOURCE, and TIME IS A VALUABLE COMMODITY are all
metaphorical concepts.
They are metaphorical since we are using our everyday experiences with money, limited
resources, and valuable
((9))
•lttmnodities to conceptualize time. This isn't a necessary Why for human beings to
conceptualize time; it is tied to our vtllture. There are cultures where time is none of these
things.
The metaphorical concepts TIME IS MONEY, TIME IS A Nlfsot)CE, and TIME IS A VALUABLE
COMMODITY form a Mingle system based on subcategorization, since in our soci-Mly money
is a limited resource and limited resources are Valuable commodities. These
subcategorization relation-Nhlps characterize entailment relationships between the
Metaphors. TIME IS MONEY entails that TIME IS A LIMITED tltl5OURCE, which entails that TIME IS A
VALUABLE COMMOUITY.
We are 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 tinder the TIME IS
MONEY metaphor, 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, /hank you for). This is an example of the way in which metaphorical entailments
can characterize a coherent system of metaphorical concepts and a corresponding coherent system of
metaphorical expressions for those concepts.
((10))
3. Metaphorical Systematicity: Highlighting and Hiding
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 hide
other aspects of the concept. In allowing us to focus on one aspect of a concept (e.g., the
battling aspects of arguing), 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 cooperative aspects of arguing. Someone who is
arguing with you can be viewed as giving you his time, a valuable commodity, 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 EXPRESSIONS ARE 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 English, which he estimates account for at
least 70 percent of
((10))
HIGHLIGHTING AND HIDING
the expressions we use for talking about language. Here are some examples:
The CONDUIT Metaphor
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't force 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 conventional
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 CONDUIT metaphor entails, we can see some
of the ways in which it masks aspects of the communieative process.
First, the LINGUISTIC EXPRESSIONS ARE CONTAINERS FOR MEANINGS aspect of the CONDUIT
metaphor entails that
words and sentences have meanings in themselves, in-dependent of any context or
speaker. The MEANINGS ARE OBJECTS part of the metaphor, for example, entails that
meanings have an existence independent of people and con-texts. The part of the metaphor
that says LINGUISTIC EXPRESSIONS 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))
matter and where all the participants in the conversation understand the sentences in the
same way. These two entailments are exemplified by sentences like
The meaning is right there in the words,
which, according to the CONDUIT metaphor, can correctly be said of any sentence. But there
are many cases where context does matter. Here is a celebrated one recorded 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.
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
((13))
important to see that the metaphorical structuring involved here is partial, not total. If it
were total, one concept would 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 called figurative, poetic,
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.
((14))
4. Orientational Metaphors
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 concept in terms of another but instead organizes
a whole system of concepts with respect to one another. We will call these orientational
metaphors, since most of them have to do with spatial orientation: up-down, in-out, frontback,
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 physical
environment. Orientational metaphors give a concept a spatial orientation; for example,
HAPPY IS UP. The fact that the concept HAPPY is oriented uP leads to English expressions like
"I'm feeling up today."
Such metaphorical orientations are not arbitrary. They have a basis in our physical and
cultural experience. Though the polar oppositions up-down, in-out, etc., are physical in
nature, the orientational metaphors based on them can 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 metaphorical concept might have arisen from our physical and cultural experience.
These accounts are meant to be suggestive and plausible, not definitive.
((15))
ORIENTATIONAL METAPHORS
HAPPY IS UP; SAD IS DOWN
I'm feeling up. That boosted my spirits. My spirits rose. You're in high spirits. Thinking about her
always gives me a lift. I'm feeling down. I'm depressed. He's really low these days. I fell into a
depression. 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. He fell 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. He fell 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
i
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 up coming 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. Since the ground is perceived as being fixed, the top of the object appears to
be moving upward in the person's field of vision.
HIGH STATUS IS UP; LOW STATUS IS DOWN
He has a lofty position. She'll rise to the top. He's at the peak of his career. He's climbing
the ladder. He has little upward mobility. He's at the bottom of the social hierarchy. She
fell in status.
Social and physical basis: Status is correlated with (social) power and (physical) power is
uP.
GOOD IS UP; BAD IS DOWN
Things are looking up. We hit a peak last year, but it's been downhill ever since. Things
are at an all-time low. He does high-quality work.
Physical basis for personal well-being: Happiness, health, life, and control—the things
that principally characterize what is good for a person—are all uP.
VIRTUE IS UP; DEPRAVITY IS DOWN
He is high-minded. She has high standards. She is upright. She is an upstanding citizen.
That was a low trick. Don't be
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underhanded. I wouldn't stoop to that. That would be beneath me. He fell into the abyss of depravity.
That was a low-down thing to do.
Physical and social basis: GOOD IS UP for a person (physical basis), together with a metaphor that
we will discuss below, SOCIETY IS A PERSON (in the version where you are not identifying with your
society). To be virtuous is to act in accordance with the standards set by the society/person to
maintain its well-being. VIRTUE IS UP because virtuous actions correlate with social well-being from
the society/ person's point of view. Since socially based metaphors are part of the culture, it'
s the
society/person'
s point of view that counts.
RATIONAL IS UP; EMOTIONAL IS DOWN
The discussion fell to the emotional level, but I raised it back up to the rational plane. We put our
feelings aside and had a high-level intellectual discussion of the matter. He couldn't rise above his
emotions.
Physical and cultural basis: In our culture people view themselves as being in control over animals,
plants, and their physical environment, and it is their unique ability to reason that places human
beings above other animals and gives them this control. CONTROL IS UP thus provides a basis for MAN
IS UP and therefore for RATIONAL IS UP.
Conclusions
On the basis of these examples, we suggest the following conclusions about the experiential
grounding, the coherence, and the 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
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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 sec-tion.)
—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
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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.
Experiential Bases of Metaphors
We do not know very much about the experiential bases of metaphors. Because of our
ignorance in this matter, we have described the metaphors separately, only later adding
speculative notes on their possible experiential bases. We are adopting this practice out of
ignorance, not out of principle. In actuality we feel that no metaphor can ever he
comprehended or even adequately represented independently of its experiential basis. For
example, MORE IS UP has a very different kind of experiential basis than HAPPY IS UP or
RATIONAL IS UP. Though the concept up is the same in all these metaphors, the experiences on
which these uP metaphors are based are very different. It is not that there are many different
ups; rather, verticality enters our experience in many different ways and so gives rise to
many different metaphors.
One way of emphasizing the inseparability of metaphors from their experiential bases
would be to build the experiential basis into the representations themselves. Thus, in-stead
of writing MORE IS UP and RATIONAL Is UP, we might have the more complex relationship shown
in the diagram.
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((figure slettet))
Such a representation would emphasize that the two parts of each metaphor are linked only
via an experiential basis and that it is only by means of these experiential bases that the
metaphor can serve the purpose of understanding.
We will not use such representations, but only because we know so little about experiential
bases of metaphors. We will continue to use the word "is" in stating metaphors like MORE IS
UP, but the is should be viewed as a shorthand for some set of experiences on which the
metaphor is based and in terms of which we understand it.
The role of the experiential basis is important in under-standing the workings of
metaphors that do not fit together because they are based on different kinds of experience.
Take, for example, a metaphor like UNKNOWN IS UP; KNOWN IS DOWN. Examples are "That's
up in the air" and "The matter is settled." This metaphor has an experiential basis very much
like that of UNDERSTANDING IS GRASPING, as in "I couldn't grasp his explanation." With
physical objects, if you can grasp something and hold it in your hands, you can look it over
carefully and get a reasonably good understanding of it. It's easier to grasp something and
look at it carefully if it's on the ground in a fixed location than if it's floating through the air
(like a leaf or a piece of paper). Thus UNKNOWN IS UP; KNOWN IS DOWN 1S coherent with
UNDERSTANDING IS GRASPING.
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But UNKNOWN IS UP is not coherent with metaphors like GOOD Is UP and FINISHED IS UP (as in
"I'm finishing up"). One would expect FINISHED to be paired with KNOWN and UNFINISHED to be
paired with UNKNOWN. But, so far as verticality metaphors are concerned, this is not the case.
The reason is that UNKNOWN IS UP has a very different experiential basis than FINISHED Is UP.
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5. Metaphor and Cultural Coherence
The most fundamental values in a culture will be coherent with the metaphorical structure
of the most fundamental concepts in the culture. As an example, let us consider some
cultural values in our society that are coherent with our UP-DOWN spatialization metaphors
and whose opposites would not be.
"More is better" is coherent with MORE IS UP and GOOD IS UP. "Less is better" is not coherent
with them.
"Bigger is better" is coherent with MORE IS UP and GOOD IS UP. "Smaller is better" is not
coherent with them.
The future will be better" is coherent with THE FUTURE IS UP and GooD Is UP. The future will be
worse" is not.
"There will be more in the future" is coherent with MORE IS UP and THE FUTURE IS UP.
"Your status should be higher in the future" is coherent with
HIGH STATUS IS UP and THE FUTURE IS UP.
These are values deeply embedded in our culture. The future will be better" is a statement of
the concept of progress. "There will be more in the future" has as special cases the
accumulation of goods and wage inflation. "Your status should be higher in the future" is a
statement of careerism. These are coherent with our present spatialization metaphors; their
opposites would not be. So it seems that our values are not independent but must form a
coherent system with the metaphorical concepts we live by. We are not claiming that all
cultural values coherent with a
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metaphorical system actually exist, only that those that do exist and are deeply entrenched
are consistent with the metaphorical system.
The values listed above hold in our culture generally—all things being equal. But
because things are usually not equal, there are often conflicts among these values and
hence conflicts among the metaphors associated with them. To explain such conflicts
among values (and their metaphors), we must find the different priorities given to these
values and metaphors by the subculture that uses them. For instance, MORE IS UP seems
always to have the highest priority since it has the clearest physical basis. The priority of
MORE IS UP over GOOD IS UP can be seen in examples like "Inflation is rising" and "The crime
rate is going up." Assuming that inflation and the crime rate are bad, these sentences
mean what they do because MORE IS up always has top priority.
In general, which values are given priority is partly a matter of the subculture one lives
in and partly a matter of personal values. The various subcultures of a mainstream culture
share basic values but give them different priorities. For example, BIGGER IS BETTER may be
in conflict with
THERE WILL BE MORE IN THE FUTURE when it comes to the
question of whether to buy a big car now, with large time payments that will eat up future
salary, or whether to buy a smaller, cheaper car. There are American subcultures where
you buy the big car and don't worry about the future, and there are others where the
future comes first and you buy the small car. There was a time (before inflation and the
energy crisis) when owning a small car had a high status within the subculture where
VIRTUE IS UP and SAVING RESOURCES
IS VIRTUOUS took priority over BIGGER IS BETTER.
Nowadays the number of small-car owners has gone up drastically because there is a large
subculture where SAV-ING MONEY IS BETTER has priority over BIGGER IS BETTER.
In addition to subcultures, there are groups whose defining characteristic is that they
share certain important values
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that conflict with those of the mainstream culture. But in less obvious ways they preserve
other mainstream values. Take monastic orders like the Trappists. There LESS IS BET-TER
and SMALLER IS BETTER are true with respect to material possessions, which are viewed as
hindering what is important, namely, serving God. The Trappists share the mainstream
value VIRTUE IS UP, though they give it the highest priority and a very different definition.
MORE is still BETTER, though it applies to virtue; and status is still uP, though it is not of
this world but of a higher one, the Kingdom of God. Moreover, THE FUTURE WILL BE BETTER
is true in terms of spiritual growth (uP) and, ultimately, salvation (really uP). This is typical of
groups that are out of the mainstream culture. Virtue, goodness, and status may be
radically redefined, but they are still uP. It is still better to have more of what is important,
THE FUTURE WILL BE BETTER with respect to what is important, and so on. Relative to what
is important for a monastic group, the value system is both internally coherent and, with
respect to what is important for the group, coherent with the major orientational metaphors
of the mainstream culture.
Individuals, like groups, vary in their priorities and in the ways they define what is good
or virtuous to them. In this sense, they are subgroups of one. Relative to what is important
for them, their individual value systems are coherent with the major orientational
metaphors of the main-stream culture.
Not all cultures give the priorities we do to up-down orientation. There are cultures where
balance or centrality plays a much more important role than it does in our culture. Or
consider the nonspatial orientation active-passive. For us ACTIVE IS UP and PASSIVE IS
DOWN in most matters. But there are cultures where passivity is valued more than activity.
In general the major orientations up-down, in-out, central-peripheral, active-passive, etc.,
seem to cut across all cultures, but which concepts are oriented which way and which
orientations are most important vary from culture to culture.
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6 Ontological Metaphors
Entity and Substance Metaphors
Spatial orientations like up-down, front-back, on-off, center-periphery, and
near-far provide an extraordinarily rich basis for understanding concepts in
orientational terms. But one can do only so much with orientation. Our
experience of physical objects and substances provides a further basis for
understanding—one that goes beyond mere orientation. Understanding our
experiences in terms of objects and substances allows us to pick out parts of
our experience and treat them as discrete entities or substances of a uniform
kind. Once we can identify our experiences as entities or substances, we can
refer to them, categorize them, group them, and quantify them—and, by this
means, reason about them.
When things are not clearly discrete or bounded, we still categorize them
as such, e.g., mountains, street corners, hedges, etc. Such ways of viewing
physical phenomena are needed to satisfy certain purposes that we have:
locating mountains, meeting at street corners, trimming hedges. Human
purposes typically require us to impose artificial boundaries that make
physical phenomena discrete just as we are: entities bounded by a surface.
Just as the basic experiences of human spatial orientations give rise to
orientational metaphors, so our experiences with physical objects (especially
our own bodies) provide the basis for an extraordinarily wide variety of ontological
metaphors, that is, ways of viewing events, activities, emotions,
ideas, etc., as entities and substances.
Ontological metaphors serve various purposes, and the
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various kinds of metaphors there are reflect the kinds of purposes served. Take the