Metaphors We Live By

Standard theories of meaning assume that all of our complex concepts can be analyzed into undecomposable primitives. Such primitives are taken to be the ultimate “building blocks” of meaning. The concept of causation is often taken to be such an ultimate building block. We believe that the standard theories are fundamentally mistaken in assuming that basic concepts are undecomposable primitives.

The three structural metaphors we have considered in this section—RATIONAL ARGUMENT IS WAR, LABOR IS A RESOURCE, and TIME IS A RESOURCE—all have a strong cultural basis. They emerged naturally in a culture like ours because what they highlight corresponds so closely to what we experience collectively and what they hide corresponds to so little. But not only are they grounded in our physical and cultural experience; they also influence our experience and our actions.

The view of labor as merely a kind of activity, independent of who performs it, how he experiences it, and what it means in his life, hides the issues of whether the work is personally meaningful, satisfying, and humane.

LABOR IS A RESOURCE and TIME IS A RESOURCE are by no means universal. They emerged naturally in our culture because of the way we view work, our passion for quantification, and our obsession with purposeful ends. These metaphors highlight those aspects of labor and time that are centrally important in our culture. In doing this, they also deemphasize or hide certain aspects of labor and time. We can see what both metaphors hide by examining what they focus on.

When we are living by the metaphors LABOR IS A RESOURCE and TIME IS A RESOURCE, as we do in our culture, we tend not to see them as metaphors at all. But, as the above account of their grounding in experience shows, both are structural metaphors that are basic to Western industrial societies.

These two complex structural metaphors both employ simple ontological metaphors. LABOR IS A RESOURCE uses AN ACTIVITY IS A SUBSTANCE. TIME IS A RESOURCE uses TIME IS A SUBSTANCE. These two SUBSTANCE metaphors permit labor and time to be quantified—that is, measured, conceived of as being progressively “used up,” and assigned monetary values; they also allow us to view time and labor as things that can be “used” for various ends.

Examples like these allow us to trace the lineage of our rational argument back through “irrational” argument (= everyday arguing) to its origins in physical combat. The tactics of intimidation, threat, appeal to authority, etc., though couched, perhaps, in more refined phrases, are just as present in rational argument as they are in everyday arguing and in war. Whether we are in a scientific, academic, or legal setting, aspiring to the ideal of rational argument, or whether we are just trying to get our way in our own household by haggling, the way we conceive of, carry out, and describe our arguments is grounded in the ARGUMENT IS WAR metaphor.

RATIONAL ARGUMENT conceived of in terms of WAR, but almost all of them contain, in hidden form, the “irrational” and “unfair” tactics that rational arguments in their ideal form are supposed to transcend.

Arguments that use tactics like these are the most common in our culture, and because they are so much a part of our daily lives, we sometimes don’t notice them. However, there are important and powerful segments of our culture where such tactics are, at least in principle, frowned upon because they are considered to be “irrational” and “unfair.” The academic world, the legal world, the diplomatic world, the ecclesiastical world, and the world of journalism claim to present an ideal, or “higher,” form of RATIONAL ARGUMENT, in which all of these tactics are forbidden. The only permissible tactics in this RATIONAL ARGUMENT are supposedly the stating of premises, the citing of supporting evidence, and the drawing of logical conclusions. But even in the most ideal cases, where all of these conditions hold, RATIONAL ARGUMENT is still comprehended and carried out in terms of WAR

Part of being a rational animal, however, involves getting what you want without subjecting yourself to the dangers of actual physical conflict. As a result, we humans have evolved the social institution of verbal argument. We have arguments all the time in order to try to get what we want, and sometimes these “degenerate” into physical violence. Such verbal battles are comprehended in much the same terms as physical battles.

Structural metaphors (such as RATIONAL ARGUMENT IS WAR) provide the richest source of such elaboration. Structural metaphors allow us to do much more than just orient concepts, refer to them, quantify them, etc., as we do with simple orientational and ontological metaphors; they allow us, in addition, to use one highly structured and clearly delineated concept to structure another.