Metaphors We Live By
by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1980)

Recommended for:
- understanding what’s going on and how other people think about what’s going on
- understanding how our brains shape our understanding of the world
- understanding how pervasive and deep metaphors are

Metaphors are not just literary devices for painting word pictures. They are an integral part of the way we think and fundamentally affect how we perceive.

Metaphors We Live By is one of the most important books I have ever read and studied. By the time I bought this book in about 1995, I had been practising law for about 11 years. Lawyers have two main skillsets: (1) first rate language skills, and (2) the ability to analyze many different types of situations and events. And yet, Drs. Lakoff and Johnson opened a whole new world of language for me: the depth and complexity of metaphors. It was this book that started my journey of discovery into the field of how language works and how we use language.

Drs. Lakoff and Johnson introduce this study by stating that “Our concepts structure what we perceive, how we get around in the world, and how we relate to other people. … The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another. … The concept is metaphorically structured, the activity is metaphorically structured, and, consequently, the language is metaphorically structured.” (pp.3-5) Thus, “metaphor means metaphorical concept.” (p. 6)

Think about these conceptual metaphors: HAPPY IS UP; SAD IS DOWN and MORE IS UP; LESS IS DOWN and UP IS GOOD; DOWN IS BAD. When someone is sad, we describe them as being “down.” Prices rise (i.e., go up). We climb the ladder of success.

A metaphor that profoundly affects how we behave is ARGUMENT IS WAR. The moment this metaphor kicks in, we’re no longer in the realm of debating or exploring ideas, we’ve morphed into warriors whose goal is to conquer the enemy. That’s a major attitudinal shift that affects how we understand what’s going on, what we say, how we say it, and what we do. All because we have injected our understanding of WAR (and if we’ve been in a war, our experience of WAR) into the argument.

This is a must-have book.

About the author:
Dr. George P. Lakoff, Ph.D. is a well known, highly respected linguist and has taught linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley since 1972. He is adept at the theoretical and philosophical bases of language, as well as with the practical application of his knowledge about how our brains process language in helping reframe social and political issues. His Berkeley home page can be found at http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/people/person_detail.php?person=21.
Dr. Mark Johnson, Ph.D. is the Chair of Philosophy at the University of Oregon. Much of his work involves the interrelationships of how we think, meaning and language. His university home page can be found at http://www.uoregon.edu/~uophil/faculty/profiles/markj/.

Published by The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1980
ISBN 0-226-46801-1

Review by Anne E. McTavish