I have been reading. A Metaphor is a figure of speech by which a thing is spoken of, as being that which it only resembles, e.g. when a ferocious man is said to be a tiger.
Lakoff & Johnson have observed that metaphor is pervasive in everyday life - we think, act and speak in metaphor. However it is fairly difficult to evidence thinking and acting in metaphor so it is easier to start the analysis with language. If you can understand one kind of thing in terms of another, you have grasped the essence of metaphor.
They demonstrated this by the statement "argument is war".
"Your claims are indefensible
He attacked every weak point in my argument
His criticisms were right on target
I demolished his argument" etc.
The language used above is not poetic, fanciful or rhetorical. It is literal. If we talk about arguments because that is how we think about them, and act accordingly, analysing the language leads us to a conclusion that metaphor could control our lives. Lakoff and Johnson state the human conceptual system is metaphorically structured and defined.
They then categorise the groups into which metaphors fall: orientational, ontological, structural etc
A structural metaphor is Time is Money, where one concept is metaphorically structured as another. Lakoff and Johnson focus on how in Western culture time is perceived as a valuable commodity, and a limited resource to achieve goals. Doesn't this show we are part of a consumer society! However there many cultures and societies where this is not true - only industrialised societies do this. Western society consider time as something that can be spent, wasted, budgeted, invested or squandered, and the metaphor can be observed in people's actions.
An orientational metaphor gives a concept of spatial orientation e.g. Happy is Up, as demonstrated by the expression "I'm feeling up today". So Happy is Up; Sad is Down. "You are in high spirits, I'm feeling down".
Conscious is Up; Unconscious is Down: "Wake up; He fell asleep"
Health and Life are Up; Sickness and Death are Down": "He's at the peak of health; He's sinking fast."
Having Control of Force is Up; Being Subject to Control of Force is Down: "I am on top of the situation; He ranks above me in strength."
More is Up; Less is Down: "My income rose last year; When too hot, turn the heat down".
Rational is Up; Emotional is Down. "The discussion fell to the emotional level but I raised it back up to the rational plane".
Ontological metaphors enable us to understand our experiences as objects or substances e.g. Inflation is an Entity - inflation is taking its toll at the checkout, or the Mind is a Machine "My imagination is firing on all cylinders".
However, my field of interest lies in metaphors that relate to women. I have noted the phrases "he fathered a child" and "she fell pregnant". I think there is a difference in the use of positive and negative orientational metaphor. The association with the man is paternalistic by the use of the word "fathered", fits with the Morality is Strength metaphor described by Zoltan Kovecses, where there upright (male) person remains good. But the association with the woman is negative by the downward direction of the word "fell".
Additionally there is the phrase "he was the breadwinner and she was the homemaker". Could this indicate Competitive Success is Up and Maker is Down? Not sure. I think winner is definitely Up but I am not sure about the maker being down, although I feel it is lesser. Perhaps it would be clearer if the whole words breadwinner and homemaker are considered.
Maybe I should collect more examples! There must be lots.
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