{"id":2353,"date":"2014-08-10T07:59:12","date_gmt":"2014-08-10T11:59:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=2353"},"modified":"2014-08-10T08:02:30","modified_gmt":"2014-08-10T12:02:30","slug":"creativity-is-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=2353","title":{"rendered":"Creativity is UP!"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Up,<\/a>

(photo: wikimedia.org)<\/p><\/div>\n

Metaphors We Live By<\/a><\/em> (George Lakoff and Mark Johnson) is a classic study of the way metaphor shapes our understanding of the world. Published in 1980, it dismisses the idea that metaphors are strictly a matter of language, the frosting on the cake of meaning, as argued by various competing philosophical and linguistic traditions. In what I usually read, the search for truth is conducted not by academics, but by a fictional detective, so some of this was heavy going. Where the authors dig into the language, their examples are fascinating.<\/p>\n

Lakoff and Johnson are not generally talking about literary metaphors, but rather about the ones so thoroughly absorbed into the language that we no longer notice them as metaphors. One fundamental set of such metaphors reflects \u201corientation\u201d: up-down, in-out, back-front, and so on. Although some metaphors in this set appear to be more or less universal across languages, others are more culturally determined. In Western culture, many common phrases reflect the metaphor \u201chappy is up<\/em>\u201d and its opposite, \u201csad is down<\/em>.\u201d Examples are:<\/p>\n