Metaphors we live by book

It can even-for better or worse-change our perceptions of things.īut armed with this view of language, Lakoff has gone on to become one of the most celebrated messaging consultants of the “progressive” left. In that seminal book, Lakoff and Johnson offer a number of powerful lessons about figurative language: Metaphor is more than mere literary window dressing metaphor is a fundamental aspect of human thought and language and metaphors help us navigate the real world with a degree of efficiency that literal language can’t offer. “ Argument is war.” That’s what cognitive linguists George Lakoff and Mark Johnson write in the opening chapter of their influential 1980 Metaphors We Live By.