Metaphors We Live By
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson argued in Metaphors We Live By (1980) that metaphor isn’t decorative language but fundamental cognitive structure. We understand abstract concepts through concrete ones. Time is money; we spend, save, waste it. Arguments are war; we attack positions, defend claims, win or lose. Life is a journey; we have destinations, crossroads, baggage.
These aren’t figures of speech we could abandon for literal description. They’re how we think. Take away the metaphors and the concepts become incoherent. What would “saving time” mean without the container metaphor that treats time as stuff that can be accumulated?
Lakoff and Johnson catalogued systematic mappings. ARGUMENT IS WAR: his criticisms were on target, she demolished his argument, I’ve never won an argument with her. LOVE IS A JOURNEY: we’re at a crossroads, this relationship is going nowhere, we’ve come a long way. IDEAS ARE FOOD: I can’t digest all these facts, that’s food for thought, a half-baked idea.
The mappings are asymmetric. We understand the abstract through the concrete, not vice versa. You can explain arguments using war vocabulary, but explaining war through argument vocabulary (“the general criticized the enemy position”) loses essential content. The body, space, and physical action provide the source domains; abstract concepts are the targets.
Different metaphors highlight different aspects. If argument is war, you notice victory and defeat. If argument is collaborative exploration (which it could be), you notice joint discovery. The metaphor frames not just language but what seems obvious, what questions arise, what moves seem possible.
Political rhetoric exploits this. “Tax relief” metaphorically frames taxation as affliction — you don’t argue against relief. “Illegal alien” activates foreign invasion frames. The metaphor does argumentative work before any explicit argument begins.
Criticism of Lakoff includes charges of unfalsifiability and cherry-picking. Any language pattern can be interpreted as metaphor if you’re creative enough. But the core insight holds: conceptual metaphors structure cognition in ways systematic enough to predict and document.
The practical implication: pay attention to the metaphors you use. They’re doing cognitive work below conscious awareness, making some ideas natural and others strange. Change the metaphor and you change what thoughts come easily.
Go Deeper
Books
- Metaphors We Live By by George Lakoff & Mark Johnson — The source. Short, readable, paradigm-shifting.
- Philosophy in the Flesh by George Lakoff & Mark Johnson — The deeper treatment. Embodied cognition and how metaphor structures philosophy itself.
- Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things by George Lakoff — Categorization, cognitive models, and how language reveals mind structure.
Related: [[language]], [[sapir-whorf]], [[pattern-language]], [[constraints]]