Is Human Thought Metaphorical?

Reviewing the book “Metaphors We Live” By George Lakoff and Mark Johnson

This book was fantastic. I was already very intrigued by metaphor, especially as I learned more about religious symbolism and started seeing it everywhere. I was looking to dig into the topic, and this was perfect.

First of all, metaphors aren’t specific instances of language. If you think of something metaphorically, you may think of something like poetry. But metaphor goes deeper than that, it really is entrenched in language in a way that you can’t easily see.

And not only is language full of metaphors, but they also form coherent conceptual metaphors. They are not independent. For example, we might say “your claims are indefensible”, or “he shot down all of my arguments”. They are both metaphors, but they are not random. They both have an underlying metaphor of an argument being war. And many others exist within that specific metaphor.

Other examples include treating time as money, such as “you’re wasting my time”, “that flat tire cost me an hour”, or “you’re running out of time”. As another metaphorical structure, we use ideas as plants or health as “up”. For example, “mathematics has many branches”, “she has a fertile imagination”, “he is in top shape, or “his health is declining”. And as you can see in the last one, metaphors can be modified and re-arranged as long as it stays coherent with the framework. Just as health and life are up, death is down. These metaphors aren’t just similar, they are part of a system. And they are also not just about language. They are part of how we think, which is then reflected in language.

The first part of the book expands this point to an incredible degree. Giving example after example and further clarifying different categories and sub-categories of metaphors. I was really impressed by how well it was done and how much work and thought was put into it. But it also got tedious very quickly. I even considered giving up on the book. But I hate doing that, so I pressed on. I’m glad I did because that eventually ended and the best part of the book actually started.

One of the best insights of the whole book, which I wish was expanded a bit, was how metaphors create a new reality. This is a bit of a problematic point to understand for some, but reality isn’t “given”. There is no “objective meaning” in the world. To understand the world, you need to conceptualize and categorize it. And this is largely humanly constructed. This affects how you perceive the world and how you act within it. Metaphors are part of how we make sense of the world, and thus the metaphors we use affect “reality”.

The last part of the book deals with the problem of objectivism and subjectivism. Both have problems, and the authors try to give a solution. I was deeply impressed by both how well they presented the case for both of them and also how they argued for their alternative. They coin it the experientialism approach, bridging the gap between the two. Truth is relative to our conceptual system, but we are also constrained by how we interact with our environment.

I have to say that the book could have been much shorter and concise. I wonder how many people gave up on it in the beginning without getting to the golden nuggets later, as I almost did. In some sense, I didn’t learn anything new, in the sense of thinking differently. However, it really deepened some ideas that I have been struggling for the last couple of years and gave it greater connections and further articulation. Metaphor is at the core not only of how we speak, but how we think and how we “unveil” the world. We quite literally “live” by them.

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Thanks for reading!