Skip to content

October 2022

Metaphors We Live By Response

  • by

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 Are there any you found odd, outdated, or different from metaphorical systems that you use, either personally or in your language, culture, or social sphere?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 a battle, or use orientational metaphors the same way the authors describe?

From my personal experience, there are many metaphorical in my culture. And Chinese poems are just perfectly made metaphorical in the most extreme way.  Now is autumn, it reminds me of one of the poems from Shi Su, there is one sentence is:一年好景君须记,最是橙黄橘绿时间。(explanation is: the best time for the whole year you have to remember, the best time is about having the yellow-orange, and orange color tangerines.) the author use the color to metaphor the season which is Autumn. it makes people have more impression about this poem. I think this is also the function why does metaphorically being excited.

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

A metaphorical system that I usually use are orientational metaphors. For instance, I used to describe no more shopping, I usually like to day cut off my hands. When I speak in these metaphors, I envision my life and behavior to display in one picture, what truly delivery my ambition of “no more shopping”, it bring out my emotional status. Furthermore to use cut off hand refer to quit of shopaholic is very common in China.

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 topicFor?

For my topic, I used “symbiotic bacteria”, metaphors refer to Migratory birds. because, symbiotic bacteria can survive as the same time with people, both of symbiotic bacteria and human being are act well. I just want t show people migratory birds can survive as symbiotic bacteria, can work smooth with the whole society.

Guide progress/draft – Bark

For my Assignment #1 guide, I will be creating a mock pharmacy medication bottle and information sheet that will contain actual cinnamon sticks.

The goal of the guide is to inform the audience of cinnamon’s history, its use in herbal medicine including its pros and cons, and the ethics around its production. This guide should be easily understood by a general audience. Using a pharmacy bottle is a metaphor for how cinnamon is not usually considered as an ingredient of pharmaceuticals in the western world, even though it has a long history of being used in herbal medicine. It brings up the argument of whether or not herbal medicine should be considered as a legitimate form of medication in the western world. The tone of this guide is to be satirical and parodic.

I have started by creating a mock pharmacy label:

This will be the container that will be displayed in the presentation:

Emergent Strategy

Question I: In your view, what is a function of humans in the universe?

I think function of human is create, product and contempt, we create tools, we found out whatever we could use for our own benefits. we create civilizations, make sure we could probably do generation to generation. we product a lot tools, or other creature to meet our all kinds of needs. we also contempt all kind of element we possible could use. That why I will say for human humans in the universe is create, product, and contempt.

Question II: Do artists, designers, and technology have that same or similar responsibility? What are the nuances between those roles?

In my opinion those three roles are similar, however based on their function somehow they are very different.

the same or similar responsibility is they all create things, but for each job description, each of them have some different. In my mind  the artist has the pure mind, they just need to emotional, and intense to feel the whole world, and directly translate the further words into the language that we used to know. Artist always have future vision to look at everything. The technology is another pure role in those three roles. technology just need to focus on how to make design into a real thing and also functional. The last I want to talk about is the most hard role out of those three. It is designer, it is a bridge from artist to technology. designer need to balance the artist elements, and buyer’s needs, also make sure the idea can possible happen in technology.