Metaphors We Live By

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The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another.

Symbolic metonymies that are grounded in our physical experience provide an essential means of comprehending religious and cultural concepts.

The speaker puts ideas (objects) into words (containers) and sends them (along a conduit) to a hearer who takes the idea/objects out of the word/containers.

human thought processes are largely metaphorical.

The most fundamental values in a culture will be coherent with the metaphorical structure of the most fundamental concepts in the culture.

Our observations about how a language can reflect the conceptual system of its speakers derive in great part from the work of Edward Sapir, Benjamin Lee Whorf, and others who have worked in that tradition.

Viewing something as abstract as inflation in human terms has an explanatory power of the only sort that makes sense to most people.

Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.