Why Is Metaphor Always In The News These Days?

Why is Metaphor always in the news these days?

Love is a journey.

What pictures come to your mind? Does this metaphor make you recall some personal experiences? Does it put you in a good or bad mood?

It seems metaphors aren't just for poetry. Some metaphors are so ingrained in our minds that they can determine how we experience the world and live our whole lives. For example, someone who subscribes to the metaphor "life is a journey" will live in a substantially different way from someone else who thinks that "life is a rat race." The first might be more enthusiastic to overcome obstacles and challenges to reach his final goal, whether it's to become the President of the country, or to become an award-winning music artist, while the other might observe life as basically going nowhere, and be less able to enjoy his career or his Monday mornings. He might pass this metaphorical disease to other people too! For centuries people thought that metaphors were only figures of speech useful for poetry and literature. This is probably what we were also taught in elementary school. But in the latter half of the 20th century there has been a great upsurge of interest in metaphor in many disciplines such as philosophy, psychology and linguistics. As one scholar joked, at this rate by the year 2039 there will probably be more students of metaphor than there are people. For example, the famous work done by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in their book "Metaphors We Live By" shows that we don't just use metaphorical sentences, but our very concepts themselves may be metaphorical. Consider for example the conceptual metaphor "Argument is War". This conceptual metaphor guides us in how we talk about arguments, such as in "He demolished my arguments", or "I can't lose this debate", or "She shot down all of my arguments." In fact, it's near impossible to think of arguments in any other way. Though it would probably be radical if someone could adopt the conceptual metaphor "Argument is Lovemaking." How would such a metaphor help out a quarrelling husband and wife?

Another good author, James Geary, says in his book "I Is An Other" that we use one metaphor for every 10-25 words, or about six metaphors every minute of conversation. Imagine that! Perhaps we can't survive without metaphors. If not for the conceptual metaphor "communication is a conduit", how would we understand ordinary statements like "do you get what I mean?", or "his words carried little meaning"? Metaphors are actually more necessary and widespread than we think. Politicians can use metaphor to change public opinion, such as in speeches about the "crusade" against terror. Scientists use metaphor to describe natural phenomena that we can't see with our five senses, such as in the term sound "wave." Musicians describe music as weeping or triumphantly marching. So these new developments have made a lot of people excited, and more and more people are researching metaphors and how they function. The question for us right now is, what are the metaphor that guide our life right now? And perhaps more importantly, are there metaphors that can change our lives for the better? The only way to find out is to take the plunge and explore metaphors for ourselves.