2022-07-13

• Metaphors We Live By Notes
  • Was reading more about metaphors.
    
  • We typically rely on more clearly delineated (or defined, relative to nearby concepts) concepts (in/out) as metaphors for less well-delineated concepts (emotional state, social group)
    • We say “Harry is in love”, where “in” does the metaphorical lifting in the statement. We don’t typically use “love” as a metaphor target.
      
  • This makes a lot of sense. Metaphor is generally used to increase clarity of understanding. And clarity is dependent on hard, clear contrasts/boundaries.
    
  • Some interesting counterexamples exist ofc. War is used metaphorically a lot. Very few people, particularly in the US, have any first hand experience with it. In that sense, it’s surprising that it could be particularly well-delineated/defined. What I think this example shows is that even though people don’t have as clear an understanding of what the experience of being in a war is like (compared with being “in the kitchen” or even “in” some emotional state), that since war is itself the among the most extreme imaginable states, you can get away with it being poorly defined. It’s kind of like “infinity” in that sense. You don’t need to know what infinity is really like to know that it’s “more”/“bigger” than the other numbers/its metaphorical neighbors. So, to summarize, things being well delineated can come from them having either a relationship with a hard, physical experience (which provides the hard boundaries) or it embodies an intense/extreme state
    
  • Another interesting thing was the idea that people use the same metaphor with different conceptual meanings.

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