| A large body of research has been conducted into what is termed by cognitive scientists as metaphor. So as not to muddy the waters, think of metaphor as a template or lens through which you view the world. Cognitive scientists have been systematically unpacking the significance of conceptual metaphor in our daily lives since the sixties. Those scholars propose that metaphors are not simply playthings of the mind, but are a “natural outgrowth of the manner in which our minds are constituted”. What that means is that conceptual metaphors are product of your neurophysiology, that you have a genetic predisposition to attribute meaning to things by way of metaphor. George Lakoff is professor of cognitive sciences at the University of California at Berkely and he asserts that metaphor rules almost all of our thinking:“We may not always know it, but we think in metaphor. A large proportion of our most commonplace thoughts make use of an extensive, but unconscious, system of metaphorical concepts, that is, concepts from a typically concrete realm of thought that are used to comprehend another, completely different domain. Such concepts are often reflected in everyday language, but their most dramatic effect comes in ordinary reasoning. Because so much of our social and political reasoning makes use of this system of metaphorical concepts, any adequate appreciation of even the most mundane social and political thought requires an understanding of this system. But unless one knows that the system exists, one may miss it altogether and be mystified by its effects”.On the conscious level metaphor can create shortcuts to understanding: cognition as the crow flies. Say, you have a complex idea you need to get across. The choice is yours: you can take your audience on a energy-sapping trek through the terrain, cross raging rivers of data, scale each conceptual obstacle as you come to it and finally, if you’re lucky, arrive at your destination. Or, you can invite them t... |
