Discussion 1

METAPHORS We Live By

GEORGE LAKOFF and MARK JOHNSON

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The University of Chicago Press

Chicago and London 1'1'1,'(\

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1 Concepts We Live By

Metaphor is for most people a device of the poetic imagina­ tion and the rhetorical ftourish-a matter of extraordinary rather than ordinary language. Moreover, metaphor is typi­ cally 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 ofthe 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 II. 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 nor­ .. mally 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 obvi­ ous. 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.

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~ 4 CHAPTER ONE

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 struc­ ture 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 indefensihle. 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 argu­ ments in terms of war. We can actually win or lose argu­ ments. We see the person we are arguing with as an oppo­ nent. 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

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 dif­ ferently, experience them differently, carry them out differ­ ently, and talk about them differently. But we would prob­ ably 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 cul­ ture 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, con­ sequently, 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." OUf 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.

CHAPTER ONE,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 lin­ guistic 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 AR­ GUMENT IS WAR, it should be understood that metaphor means metaphorical concept.

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 that we in part conceptualize arguments in terms of battle systematically 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 expres­ sions 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 system­ atic 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 ~ay language can give us insight into the metaphorical na­ tUre of the concepts that structure our everyday activities, !e~ us consider the metaphorical concept TIME IS MONEY as Ills reflected in contemporary English.

TIME IS MONEY

You're wasting my time. This gadget will save you hours.

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9 CHAPTER TWO 8

I don't have the time to give you. How do you spend your time these days? That flat tire ('ost me an hour. I've invested a lot of time in her. I don't h({l'(> enollgh 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 )'0111' while? Do you have much time He's living on borrowed time. You don't use your time I lost a lot of time when I got sick, Thank you for your

Time in our culture is a valuable commodity, It is a lim­ ited resource that we use to accomplish our goals. Because of the way that the concept of work has developed in mod­ ern 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 in­ dustrialized societies and structure our basic everyday ac­ tivities in a very profound way. Corresponding to the fact that we (lct 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 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

SYSTEMATICITY

commodities to conceptualize time. This isn't a necessary way for human beings to conceptualize time: it is tied to our culture. There are cultures where time is none of these things.

The metaphorical concepts TIME IS MONEY, TIME IS A RESOURCE, and TIME IS A VALUABLE COMMODITY form a single system based on subcategorization, since in our soci­ ety money is a limited resource and limited resources are valuable commodities. These subcategorization relation­ ships characterize entailment relationships between the metaphors. TIME IS MONEY entails that TIME IS A LIMITED RESOURCE, which entails that TIME IS A VALUABLE COM­ MODITY.

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 under the TIME IS MONEY metaphor, some refer specifically to money (spend, invest. budget, pn~fitably, cost), others to limited resources (lise, use up, have cnollr;h of; run out of), and still others to valuable commodities (have, give, lose, thank you for). This is an example of the way in which metaphorical entailments can characterize a coherent sys­ tem of metaphorical concepts and a corres ponding coherent system of metaphorical expressions for those concepts.

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 con­ cept in terms of another but instead organizes a whole sys­ tem of concepts with respect to one another. We will call these orielllatiollal metaphors, since most of them have to do with spatial orientation: up-down, in-out, front-back, 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 physi­

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 expres­ sions 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 de­ finitive.

ORIENTATION AL METAPHORS 15

HAPPY IS UP; SAD IS DOWN

I'm feeling up. That boosted my spmts. My spirits rose. You're in high spirits. Thinking about her always gives me a

I'm feeling dOll'n. I'm depressed. He's really loll' these Ifel! 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 lip. Wake lip. I'm lip already. He rises early in the morning. Hefell asleep. He dropped off to sleep. He's Ilnder 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 lip there. Helell ill. He's sinking fast. He came down with the flu. His health is

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 O1'e,. her. I am on top (~f the situation. He's in a position. He's at the height of his power. He's in the

command. He's in the IIpper echelon. His power rose. He ranks obm'e me in strength. He is IInder my control. He

from power. His power is on the decline. He is my social iI(/c'rio,.. He is loll' mall 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 lip. His

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16 CHAPTER FOUR

draft numher 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 upcoming 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 lojiy position. She'll rise to the top. He's at the of his career. He's climbing the ladder. He has little upwara mobility. He's at the bottOn! of the social hierarchy. She fell in status.

Social and physical basis: Status is correlated with (so­ cial) power and (physical) power is UP.

GOOD IS UP; BAD [S DOWN

Things are looking up. We hit a peak last year, hut it's been downhill ever since. Things are at an all-time low. He does high- quality work.

Physical basis for personal weIl-being: Happiness, health, life, and control-the things that principally characterize what is good for a person-are all UP.

VIRTUE IS UP; DEPRAVITY [S DOWN

He is high- minded. She has high standards. She is IIpright. She is an upstanding citizen. That was a lolt' trick. Don't be

ORIENTATIONAL METAPHORS 17

underhanded. I wouldn't stoop to that. That would he he­ neath me. He fell into the ahyss of depravity. That was a

thing to do.

Physical and social basis: GOOD IS UP for a person (physi­ cal 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 accordance with the standards set by the society/person to maintain its well-being, VIRTUE IS UP because virtuous ac­ tions 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 discussionjdl to the emotional level, but I raised it back up to the rational plane. We put ourfeelings aside and had a high-level intellectllal 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 coher­ ence, 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 exam­ ple of an incoherent system would be one where, say, ''I'm

18 CHAPTER FOUR

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 expe­ riential 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 expres­ sions, 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, HEAl.THY IS UP, etc.

-In some cases spatialization is so essential a part of a concept that it is dimcult 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

19 ORlENTATIONAL METAPHORS

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 lolt' 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.

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23 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 oppo­ sites would not be.

"More is better" is coherent with MORE IS UP and GOOD IS UP. 0. 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 1I1GH 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 prog­ ress. "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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METApHOI~ AND CULTURAL COHERENCE

metaphorical system actually exist, only that those that do exist and are deeply entrenched arc consistent with the metaphorical system.

The values listed above hold in our culture generally-all things being equal. But because things arc 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 15 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 bu y 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

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 RE­ SOURCES 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 defin­ ing characteristic is that they share certain important values

24 CHAPTER FIVE

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 mate­ rial possessions, which are viewed as hindering what is im­ portant, namely, serving God. The Trappists share 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, TIlE 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

. of the mainstream culture. Individuals, like groups, vary in their priorities

ways they define what is good or virtuous to them. In this sense, they are subgroups of one. Relative to what is im­ portant for them, their individual value systems are coher­ ent with the major orientational metaphors of the main­ stream culture.

we do to up-down There are cultures where balance or centrality

plays a much more important role than it does in our ture. 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

Not all cultures give the priorities