Lakoff and Johnson explain how metaphors allow individuals to reason and understand by conceptualizing the abstract in terms of the more concrete. I never really considered metaphors as pertinent to anything other than contributing to meaning of language use, but in “Metaphors We Live By” the authors assert that metaphors not only show similarities, they also suggest certain emotions we attribute to words and phrases. Language is not generally neutral, considering the conclusion by Lakoff and Johnson say (67, 68), that asserts:
The three structural metaphors we have considered in this section-- RATIONAL ARGUMENT IS WAR, LABOR IS A RESOURCE, and TIME IS A RESOURCE-- all have a strong cultural basis. They emerged naturally in a culture like ours because what they highlight corresponds so closely to what we experience collectively and what they hide corresponds to so little."
Language carries certain biases in our culture and by using expressions that fit these categories, individuals accept the values of their society (ie: time is valuable or visualizing the mind as an entity, which allows us evaluate its efficiency). I am interested in learning how these metaphors are impacted by the formation of stereotypes. Are stereotypes formed by the media and those in power, like Ewen and Ewen suggest, then incorporated into the language once cultural values have been established, or are the processes separate? Also, bias and stereotypes certainly influence our language patterns, but it seems like cultural values are constantly changing. It appears to me that the metaphors we use would therefore have to be a mix of old and new cultural values, with the newer expressions originating from more modern experiences and values.
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