Metaphor is for most people a device of the poetic imagination and the rhetorical flourish—a matter of extraordinary rather than ordinary language. Moreover, metaphor is typically viewed as a characteristic of language alone, a matter of words rather than thought or action. For this reason, most people think they can get along perfectly well without metaphor. We have found, on the contrary, that metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.
p 5
The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another.
TIME IS MONEY, TIME IS A LIMITED RESOURCE, TIME IS A VALUABLE COMMODITY are all metaphorical concepts. They are metaphorical since we are using our everyday experiences with money, limited resources, and valuable commodities to conceptualize time.
Standard theories of meaning assume that all of our complex concepts can be analyzed into undecomposable primitives. [...] We believe that the standard theories are fundamentally mistaken in assuming that basic concepts are undecomposable primitives.
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A proper understanding of causation requires that it be viewed as a cluster of other components. But the cluster forms a gestalt—a whole that we human beings find more basic than the parts.
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We are using the word "prototypical" in the sense Rosch uses in her theory of human categorization (1977). Her experiments indicate that people categorize objects, not in set-theoretical terms, but in terms of protypes and family resemblances.
Judging by the concepts that are defined by the metaphor we have uncovered so far, the following would be examples of concepts of natural kinds of experience in our culture: LOVE, TIME, IDEAS, UNDERSTANDING, ARGUMENTS, LABOR, HAPPINESS, HEALTH, CONTROL, STATUS, MORALITY, etc. These are concepts that require metaphorical definition, since they are not clearly enough delineated in their own terms to satisfy the purposes of our day-to-day functioning.Similarly, we would suggest that concepts that are used in metaphorical definitions to define other concepts also correspond to natural kinds of experience. Examples are PHYSICAL ORIENTATIONS, OBJECTS, SUBSTANCES, SEEING, JOURNEYS, WAR, MADNESS, FOOD, BUILDINGS, etc. These concepts [...] are structured well enough [...] to do the job of defining other concepts.
[...] a FAKE GUN is not a GUN.
"Ordinary words convey only what we know already; it is from metaphor that we can best get hold of something fresh" (Aristotle, Rhetorics, 1410b)
Metaphor is one of our most important tools for trying to comprehend partially what cannot be comprehended totally.
When it really counts, meaning is almost never communicated according to the CONDUIT metaphor, that is, when one person transmits a fixed, clear proposition to an other by means of expressions in a common language, where both parties have all the relevant knowledge, assumptions, values, etc. When the chips are down, meaning is negociated: you slowly figure out what you have in common, what it is safe to talk about [...]
Communications theories based on the CONDUIT metaphor turn from the pathetic to the evil when they are applied indiscriminately on a large scale [...]