Metaphors

The Building Blocks of Thought

Location: Tainan, Taiwan
Date: June 26, 2022
Time: 18:30

Creative metaphors compare two disparate things, such as eyes as bright as the sunrise or all the world is a stage and we are merely actors. Since the 1980s linguists, most notably George Lakoff at the University California at Berkeley, have explored how almost every feature of language is a metaphor.

Our phenomenological experience of the physical world is the basis for these structural metaphors. Common English phrases contain metaphors that are built on our physical experience of the world. The experience of gravity provides each person with a sense of up and down. You stand up, get up from bed, rise to the occasion.  These contrast with phrases such as  sit down, fell asleep, sank into a depression. 

We will discuss these basic, embodied metaphors in multiple languages and see if we can use metaphors to understand the language of relationships.

Please contact us if you wish to attend.

Here is the diagram we discussed about the two time metaphors used in Chinese. This diagram is for the day. Similar ones can be made for month and year.

The language embodies the up/down movement of the sun (time as one’s movement along a path) and the front back feature of moving bodies (time as a moving container).
Here are a couple of articles the embodiment of metaphors for Mandarin speakers.