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A review
• Metaphors are conceptual, influence our action, and are revealed in our language.
• Systematic and pervasive
Cultural Coherence
• Deeply entrenched values are consistent with the metaphorical system.
• Value: More is Better– Metaphors: More is Up, Good is Up– Less is Better is not coherent with these
metaphors.
• There may be conflicts among our values.
• There are conflicts among the underlying metaphors. – Inflation is rising, Crime rate is going up
• One metaphor will be given priority.
• More is Up over Good is Up
What values have priority?
• A value conflict(buying a car)– Saving Money is Virtuous– Bigger is Better
• Depends on– The sub-culture we live in– Our personal values
Values in a Sub-group
• Trappists: Less is Better [material]
• Yet, More is Better [virtue]
• Future will be Better [spiritual growth]
For the Sub-group
• Metaphors will be internally coherent with respect to what is important for the group.
• Are coherent with the major orientational metaphors of the mainstream culture.
Conventional metaphors
• Part of our conventional conceptual system– Orientational– Ontological– Structural
• Our conventional conceptual system is the framework in which we think, act, and communicate.
Metaphors with New Meaning
• Metaphors can create new understandings of our experiences
• “Reverberate through a network of entailments”– What does a collaborative work of art “entail?”
Love is a Collaborative Work of Art
• Is Work• Is Active• Requires Cooperation• Requires Dedication• Requires Discipline• Involves Creativity• Cannot Be Achieved
by Formula
• Is Unique in Each Instance
• Emphasizes Certain Aspects of Love; Masks Others
• Thus, Giving the Concept of Love a New Meaning
• A new metaphor will highlight some aspects and hide other aspects.
• Love as a Collaborative Work highlights– work, creation, pursuing goals, building,
helping
• Other aspects of love from previous metaphors are hidden– active vs. passive aspects– Love is a Journey
• (On the rocks)
– Love is Madness• (out of control, He’s crazy about her)
New Meanings guide action
• A new image of love can guide our future actions and help set new goals.– (What goals fit the passive metaphors for love?)
• The New Meaning is– partly culturally determined– partly tied to past experiences
Cultural Change
• Can arise from the acquisition of new metaphors and the loss of old ones.
• TIME is MONEY leads to Westernization
• MORE is BETTER
• What others?
Creative Metaphors Can Change Social Reality
• Changed images change our behavior.
• This includes changes in the way we frame the problems we wish to solve.
Examples
• Slum as a Disease
• Slum as a Natural Community
• Welfare as a safety net
• Welfare as a hammock
Images are Important
• A particular metaphor suggests– a particular view of reality– and, hence, suggests a particular social response
• “People in power get to impose their metaphors.” L&J– Carter wages war on the energy crisis.– Amory Lovins contrasts
• Hard Energy path(inflexible, non-renewable)
• Soft Energy path(not needing defense by force)
Rush Limbaugh:“Society is a Family”
• Liberal Society is a Family of Pigs– …the large sow is near death. She’s not fat and
flourishing, she’s emaciated. A lot of the piglets have dropped off and are running around lost because they can’t get any more nourishment.
– You are supporting a giant bloated pig in Washington, D.C.
• A metaphor in a political or economic system, by virtue of what it hides, can lead to human degradation.
Models as metaphors
• McCloskey calls for a balance among fact, logic, metaphor, and stories.
• Man as individual, materialistic(an overstatement perhaps), More is Better.
L&J’s Destination
• Objectivism– Modern
• from a need to understand the external world in order to be able to function in it (positivist, behavioralist)
• Subjectivism– Post-modern: internal aspects of understanding
• an attempt to overcome alienation from the world
• Experientialist:– Man as part of his environment
• things in the world do constrain our conceptual system
• properties and similarities exist and can be experienced only relative to a conceptual system
– Suggest that coherence in our experience=meaning