Explain and discuss how metaphors work. Do you agree with the claim made by Lakoff & Johnson (1980, Metaphors We Live By) that we live by metaphors?

The first 200 words of this essay...

Seminar Leader: Ms. Nicola Schmidt-Renfree Graham Buchanan gb219

20th January 2009

School of European Culture and Language Studies

English Language Unit

LZ327 Understanding Language

Explain and discuss how metaphors work. Do you agree with the claim made by Lakoff & Johnson (1980, Metaphors We Live By) that we live by metaphors?

In its most generalist sense metaphors are, as stated by Lakoff (Lakoff & Johnson, 1981), 'understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another'. They are different from techniques such as similes as instead of saying one thing is like another we are saying it is the other. However metaphors are very complex, there being many different forms of metaphors used in different environments and to achieve different effects.

Metaphors can essentially be split in the two major groups, the figurative metaphors and dead metaphors. The figurative metaphor is what most people think of as the conventional metaphor and usually the only one. The linguistic I.A Richards (Richards, 1936) set out the basic model for a metaphor to be compromised of a tenor, being the subject, which is described in terms of the vehicle, being the object, through