The Language Impact - Evolution -- System -- Discourse - Alwin Frank Fill
9. Cognitive Linguistics: the Impact of Metaphor and Frame
The Language Impact - Evolution -- System -- Discourse - Alwin Frank Fill
Alwin Frank Fill [+]
University of Graz
Description
The cognitive theory of metaphor, which is a theory of the impact of metaphor on our behaviour, goes back to Metaphors We Live By, a book written by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson and first published in 1980. In this book the thesis is postulated that our thinking is pervaded by metaphors and that without noticing, we are led and misled by long-standing metaphorical ideas such as LIFE is A JOURNEY, UP is GOOD and MORE is BETTER, etc. So understood, metaphor is not regarded as an embellishment of a (literary) text or as a poetic device which makes a text have a literal and a figurative meaning; rather, metaphor is seen as an every-day, even hidden phenomenon of thinking, which without our noticing determines the way we think about abstract ideas. Lakoff and Johnson speak of ‘conceptual metaphors’, not linguistic ones. Metaphor is something characteristic of our thinking; language is only the medium through which this metaphorical thinking is expressed.