Discuss and illustrate the view that metaphors influence thought and action

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Discuss and illustrate the view that metaphors influence thought and action

Metaphors are omnipresent in language, the title of this essay, for example, contains a metaphor, but for the sake of accuracy, let us define exactly what a metaphor is.  According to the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, metaphor is “a figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them”.  In other words, metaphor is a linguistic tool used in order to describe an object or concept by using an alternative and often very different word.  For example, the title of this essay asks that the author, “illustrate the view”, the author is not expected to draw a picture, but instead must expound and explain “the view”.  Linguists, meanwhile, find that metaphors not only act as a stumbling block in theories of meaning, they also frequently underlie the historical processes of meaning change.

 

As stated above, metaphor is a tool.   However, it is an everyday tool in constant use.  What is remarkable is the ease with which we make unconscious and automatic use of metaphor.  It is also not in anyway limited to poets or abstract thinkers, as Lackoff and Turner state in their book, “More than Cool Reason”, metaphor, “is accessible to everyone: as children, we automatically, as a matter of course, acquire a mastery of everyday metaphor.”  Lackoff and Turner go on to say metaphor is conventional, in that it is an essential part of normal thought and language.  Thirdly, they claim, metaphor helps “us to understand ourselves and our world in ways that no other modes of thought can” and that metaphor is “indispensable not only to our imagination but also to our reason.”  That is to say, without metaphor as part of our language, we would not cogitate or rationalise in the same manner as we do without it.  The use of metaphor occurs in every corner of life and society where language is present.  In economics, we talk about inflation, when discussing the environment, the greenhouse effect could come up and in sport we can talk about a player being out.

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One of the characteristics that metaphor shares with language is the we all understand metaphors, just as we understand language.  There may be cases where individuals do not see the connection between, but generally, if someone were to construct a metaphor, its meaning could be easily, and unconsciously, be determined by someone else.

 

To further discuss this topic we must identify the particular view that metaphors influence thought and action.  According to “A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics”, by David Crystal, Cognitive Metaphor is the theory that “metaphor is viewed as performing an essential role in human language ...

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