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