Because such metaphors structure our most basic understandings of our experience, they are 'metaphors we live by'-metaphors that can shape our perceptions and actions without our ever noticing them.

Metaphor, the authors explain, is a fundamental mechanism of mind, one that allows us to use what we know about our physical and social experience to provide understanding of countless other subjects.

The now-classic 'Metaphors We Live By' changed our understanding of metaphor and its role in language and the mind. And for this new edition, they supply an afterword both extending their arguments and offering a fascinating overview of the current state of thinking on the subject of the metaphor. Bringing together the perspectives of linguistics and philosophy, Lakoff and Johnson offer an intriguing and surprising guide to some of the most common metaphors and what they can tell us about the human mind. In this book, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson suggest that these basic metaphors not only affect the way we communicate ideas, but actually structure our perceptions and understandings from the beginning. But most are much more basic than that - they're 'metaphors we live by', metaphors we use without even realizing we're using them. Some of those metaphors are literary - devices for making thoughts more vivid or entertaining. People use metaphors every time they speak.

Metaphors we live by book