- Lakoff + Johnson give several examples throughout the text of linguistic metaphorical systems. Are there any you found odd, outdated, or different from metaphorical systems that you use, either personally or in your language, culture, or social sphere? For instance, do you speak about conversation as battle, or use orientational metaphors the same way the authors describe?
One metaphorical saying that has never quite clicked in my brain is when someone says “shoot”, and they mean “go for it”, like Lakoff and Johnson mention, “You disagree? Okay, shoot!“. Though this is a pretty common phrase in English, and in my culture, my brain usually interprets the word “shoot” as a euphemism for “shit”. So my first instinct is to understand the person as saying, “shit, you disagree with me”, rather than the intended meaning of, “okay, you disagree with me, let’s hear your argument”. - Can you identify a metaphorical system that you commonly use? What do you think is the motivating rationale (“experiential basis”) behind that system – or is there one? Have you ever intentionally (or unintentionally) changed the metaphorical system that you use to speak about a certain subject, to reflect a different experience or worldview?
This is so hard to identify! I usually don’t know when I speak in common metaphors and idioms until I’m speaking with someone who English isn’t their first language – because I recognize that English has a lot of idioms that don’t make much sense when taken literally. But trying to come up with something on my own is difficult!One system I have been able to identify is “north is up or straight ahead” and I think this is mostly because when looking at a map, North is usually oriented at the top. This has some cascading implications that “south is down or behind”, “west is left”, “east is right”. This obviously gets tricky, and becomes untrue when I am not in fact facing north. Furthermore, I realize that I internally think of specific places as being up, down, left or right from my current location, or possibly from where I grew up. For example, even if I were always facing north, when I think of “the west coast”, I often envision a place that is to my left. But, this is very dependent on where I am, and which “west coast” we’re talking about. The west coast of Ireland for example is actually to the east of me, and is “to the right”. So in this case west is not left.
- What metaphors/systems of metaphor are commonly used when discussing your topic? If “the essence of a metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another” (5), what other kinds of metaphors might be useful for discussing your topic, or an aspect of your topic?
The term “colonial organism” itself could be part of a system of metaphors. It is using a human-centric idea of colonies and applying that to organisms as a way for humans to understand how they live and survive. But the organisms themselves likely don’t have any concept that their way of living, and being dependent on one another for life is “different” in any way. Scientists also seem to use the term “kin” or “kinship” when talking about microorganisms that are genetically similar, and use this metaphor to understand how the interact with organisms that are genetically different. This has become especially interesting to me since talking with Margaret about slime mold – she mentioned that science doesn’t know if the slime mold amoebas even “care” that their neighbors are kin or not. Based on their behavior of self-sacrificing in order for others to survive, it is unknown if this is done because they are competing with those that are different, of if they are just cooperating to that life can continue. Humans use a human-centric metaphor system when looking at anything that is not human as a way to understand their biology, behavior, relationships, etc. And though that metaphor system makes sense, since it is a way to compare, it is not always accurate.