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Overview
This arresting book will make you think, in a whole new way, about the language we use. For metaphors are not mere poetical or rheotrical embellishments, Lakoff and Johnson hold, but are a part of everyday speech that affects the ways in which we perceive, think, and act. Reality itself is defined by metaphor, and as metaphors vary from culture to culture, so do the realities they define.Synopsis
The now-classic Metaphors We Live By changed our understanding of metaphor and its role in language and the mind. Metaphor, the authors explain, is a fundamental mechanism of mind, one that allows us to use what we know about our physical and social experience to provide understanding of countless other subjects. Because such metaphors structure our most basic understandings of our experience, they are "metaphors we live by"-metaphors that can shape our perceptions and actions without our ever noticing them.
In this updated edition of Lakoff and Johnson's influential book, the authors supply an afterword surveying how their theory of metaphor has developed within the cognitive sciences to become central to the contemporary understanding of how we think and how we express our thoughts in language.