A cognitive study of metaphor and metonymy. Plan: I. Introduction II. Main part

Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things,
answered 
some of these criticisms before they were even made: he explores the effects 
of cognitive metaphors (both culturally specific and human-universal) on the 
grammar per se of several languages, and the evidence of the limitations of 
the classical logical-positivist or Anglo-American School philosophical 
concept of the category usually used to explain or describe the scientific 
method. 
Lakoff's 
reliance 
on 
empirical 
scientific 
evidence, 
i.e.
specifically falsifiable predictions, in the 1987 work and 
in 
Philosophy in the Flesh
 (1999) suggests that the cognitive-metaphor 
position has no objections to the scientific method, but instead considers the 
scientific method a finely developed reasoning system used to discover 

---

phenomena which are subsequently understood in terms of new conceptual 
metaphors (such as the metaphor of fluid motion for conducted electricity, 
which is described in terms of "current" "flowing" against "impedance," or 
the gravitational metaphor for static-electric phenomena, or the "planetary 
orbit" model of the atomic nucleus and electrons, as used by Niels Bohr). 
Further, partly in response to such criticisms, Lakoff and Rafael E. 
Núñez, in 2000, proposed a cognitive science of mathematics that would 
explain mathematics as a consequence of, not an alternative to, the human 
reliance on conceptual metaphor to understand abstraction in terms of basic 
experiential concretes. 
Literature 
The Linguistic Society of America has argued that "the most 
recent linguistic approach to literature is that of cognitive metaphor, which 
claims that metaphor is not a mode of language, but a mode of thought. 
Metaphors project structures from source domains of schematized bodily or 
enculturated experience into abstract target domains. We conceive the 
abstract idea of life in terms of our experiences of a journey, a year, or a day. 
We do not understand Robert Frost's 'Stopping by Woods on a Snowy 
Evening' to be about a horse-and-wagon journey but about life. We 
understand Emily Dickinson's 'Because I could not stop for Death' as 
a poem about the end of the human life span, not a trip in a carriage. This 
work is redefining the critical notion of imagery. Perhaps for this reason, 
cognitive metaphor has significant promise for some kind of rapprochement 
between linguistics and literary study."
[23]
 
Education 
Teaching thinking by analogy (metaphor) is one of the main themes 
of The Private Eye Project. The idea of encouraging use of conceptual 

---

metaphors can also be seen in other educational programs touting the 
cultivation of "critical thinking skills". 
The work of political scientist Rūta Kazlauskaitė examines 
metaphorical models in school-history knowledge of the controversial Polish-
Lithuanian past. On the basis of Lakoff and Johnson's conceptual metaphor 
theory, she shows how the implicit metaphorical models of everyday 
experience, which inform the abstract conceptualization of the past, truth, 
objectivity, knowledge, and multiperspectivity in the school textbooks, 
obstruct an understanding of the divergent narratives of past experience.
[24]
 
Language learning 
There is some evidence that an understanding of underlying conceptual 
metaphors can aid the retention of vocabulary for people learning a foreign 
language.
[25]
 To improve learners' awareness of conceptual metaphor, 
one monolingual learner's dictionary, the Macmillan English Dictionary has 
introduced 50 or so 'metaphor boxes'
[26]
 covering the most salient Lakoffian 
metaphors 
in 
English.
[27][28]
 For 
example, 
the 
dictionary 
entry 
for 
conversation
includes a box with the heading: 'A conversation is like 
a 
journey
, with the speakers going from one place to another', followed by 
vocabulary items (words and phrases) which embody this metaphorical 
schema.
[29]
 Language teaching experts are beginning to explore the relevance 
of conceptual metaphor to how learners learn and what teachers do in the 
classroom.
[30]
 
Conceptual metaphorical mapping in animals 
A current study showed a natural tendency to systematically map an 
abstract dimension, such as social status, in our closest and non-linguistic 
relatives, the chimpanzees.
[31]
 In detail, discrimination performances between 
familiar conspecific faces were systematically modulated by the spatial 
location and the social status of the presented individuals, leading to 

---

discrimination facilitation or deterioration. High-ranked individuals presented 
at spatially higher position and low-ranked individuals presented at lower 
position led to discrimination facilitation, while high-ranked individuals at 
lower positions and low-ranked individuals at higher position led to 
discrimination deterioration. This suggests that this tendency had already 
evolved in the common ancestors of humans and chimpanzees and is not 
uniquely human, but describes a conceptual metaphorical mapping that 
predates language. 

---