Metaphors I

After only the first paragraph I had one thought: please, oh please don’t be another mindbender. There were a few days when we were talking about Zen that I left feeling even more confused than when we began; like absolutely mind-fucked!

“We have found, on the contrary, that metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just language but in thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.” (1)

This quote made me want to look up the definition of a metaphor, because I wanted to have a solid understanding before I went on. According to Merriam-Webster: a word or phrase for one thing that is used to refer to another thing in order to show or suggest that they are similar.” From the definition that I have provided, I’m beginning to get the feeling that a large onset of confusion is about to begin. OK, yes metaphors are common in everyday life, but they are given meaning by language and those who are speaking them or listening/ interpreting them. Before I broke it down like this I was really confused, however after my above sentence I am not as confused, but actually tend to agree with the quote. But then the second part, I do not believe that we think and act based on metaphors. If I believed that then essentially I would be looking for something similar to what I already have.

For some reason I think of the religious story the tower of Babble, and how everyone was forced to speak a different language. Here I feel like they were using metaphors to try to communicate, since there were no longer common words. The people of Babble had to try and show through actions what they were talking about to others because language was no longer useful to them.

Often in marketing we talk about consumer values and perception and how they relate to the cultural norms formed by society.  This quote demonstrates that even when looking outside of marketing/advertising, values and perception play a large role in understanding/acceptance. “In general, which values are given priority is partly a matter of the subculture on lives in and partly a matter of personal values.” (23) I would like to make a comment that this quote in a way almost contradicts it self. I believe that subculture plays a large role on how ones personal values are developed. Thus, subculture plays a larger role when talking about individual’s value preferences.

“We claim that most of our normal conceptual system is metaphorically structured; that is, most concepts are partially understood in terms of other concepts.” (56) I tend to agree with this idea, but it makes me think about when young children are learning the alphabet. At that age, they understand very few concepts, so I image it would be difficult to try and explain the letter A. I remember having wooden cut out letters, and the pictures that have the letter and an animal that starts with that letter, but I cant think of anything that could substitute the letter or something similar to it, other than another letter.

Bringing us a little further in young education what about the word the.  The is just the, it cant be replaced or substituted and when you look for its synonyms none exist. So how does a concept like the get taught?  I asked myself the meaning of the, and couldn’t seem to come up with a very good answer, other than it specifies something.

I again looked on Merriam-Webster dictionary and the is: used to indicate a person or thing that has already been mentioned or seen or is clearly understood from the situation; used to refer to things or people that are common in daily life; and used to refer to things that occur in nature.” Simply because I use language I know when to use the, but for a young child that is just beginning to learn language I would image it to be very difficult.