Metaphors and Values

After speaking English all of my life, not once have I thought about the fact that my first language has a heavy usage of metaphor until I read excerpts from George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s book Metaphors We Live By. I realized that I use metaphorical concepts everyday without even realizing it because the metaphorical language I use has become ordinary and apart of my subconscious. Some examples of conceptual metaphors in my language include “life is a game”, “love is warmth” and “status is up”.

The metaphor, “life is a game” indicates that there are many aspects to life, including winning, losing, teamwork and fun. Games include working towards a goal and sometimes losing, however it is still fun. This metaphor reveals a positive outlook on life as it seems to suggest that life can be fun despite obstacles faced in the “game”.

Another metaphor used is  “love is warmth”, which associates a physical feeling to an emotion. My culture might associate these two things together because it is a culture in which people show affection through physicality, therefore the connection between affection and warmth is made. This metaphor would not be understood in every culture because in some cultures it is not normal to touch others, so affection would not be associated with touch.

My culture also uses the metaphor “status is up”, which means that we associate wealth and power with the word “up”. This might mean that as a culture we strive to “move up” by gaining wealth, power or status, associating the word “up” with “gain” and “good”. We therefore might start to see others as “lower” and look down on them, giving those of lower wealth, power or status a negative association.

Metaphors are all around us in our culture and they vary within cultures due to different cultures unique values. These conceptual metaphors reveal a lot about a culture as they give a glimpse and a gateway to compare different cultures values.


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