Metaphors We Live By

George Lakoff, Mark Johnson, and Mark Turner suggest that literary metaphors and linguistic metaphors are not the same. In many ways they are opposite of each other. Ironically, literary metaphors are called “Live Metaphors,” while linguistic metaphors are called “Dead Metaphors,” even though the opposite is true. A literary metaphor occurs only in one place, a particular poem, play, or literary work, where a linguistic metaphor occurs in the language itself. Therefore, a linguistic (dead) metaphor is much more alive (dynamic) than is a literary metaphor. When Shakespeare used the expression “Something’s rotten in Denmark” in Hamlet, this was a literary metaphor, but when the expression “something’s rotten in Denmark” became a part of the living language (a linguistic metaphor), it became much more dynamic, alive, and significant.

So from now on, we will only be referring to Linguistic, or Conceptual Metaphors. There are three things to consider when dealing with a Conceptual Metaphor, the Source, the Target, and the Ground (what the source and the Target have in common). Metaphor Sources tend to be the common, ordinary, old, prototypical, simple, and concrete aspects of life.

Common metaphor sources are body parts, animals, plants, weather, containers, up/down, journeys, hot/cold, building, food, war, etc. Typical metaphor targets are abstract, complex, and new. These include new technology (e.g. computers), social change, religious change, exploration, invention, discovery, macrocosm, microcosm, life, war, love, happiness, morality, anger, fear, politics, etc.

The Metaphor Ground is what the Metaphor Source and the Metaphor Target have in common. “Kidney beans” are the same color and same shape as “Kidneys”; but their size is different, and so is their texture and taste. “A Head of Lettuce” is the same size and shape as a human “Head”; but is different in color and intelligence. As a third example, consider “Elbow Macaroni,” which is the same shape and color as a human “Elbow,” but differs in size and taste.

This PowerPoint will discuss the typical sources of conceptual metaphors, the “metaphors we live by”: as follows: Animals, Body Parts, Clothing, Comparison and Contrast, Numbers, Plants and Food, Our Senses, Time, Life, and Death.

Solopova, O. A., Don Nilsen, and Alleen Nilsen. “The Image of Russia through Animal Metaphors: A Diachronic Case Study of American Media Discourse”:

https://journals.rudn.ru/linguistics/issue/view/1690 : RUSSIAN JOURNAL OF LINGUISTICS (2023).