Reddit reviews Metaphors We Live By

So I know this sub is not particularly interested in cognitive linguistics, but I think the idea of conceptual metaphor beautifully explains the use of "literally".

The thesis of conceptual metaphor is that metaphor is ubiquitous in language use and understanding, and this kind of metaphor is used and understood unconsciously. Metaphors We Live By is the original source for a lot of these. So for example, communication is conceptualized as a conduit, thus we say things like "get the idea across", "transmit information", and so on without realizing they are metaphorical.

Another ubiquitous metaphor is that intensity can be conveyed by "realness" or "actuality." The OED shows that the word "really" was originally used frequently to describe the real presence (as opposed to the figurative presence) of Christ in the Eucharist. We see that it has alternatively been used as an intensifier for almost the same amount of time. Exactly the same thing is the case with "truly". Both of these words primarily meant "literally" but quickly acquired meaning as intensifiers. Why? Because of the conceptual metaphor that describing something as "real" can be to emphasize it, thus "that show was really out of this world" and "she is truly a diamond in the rough." Both of these violate the primary sense of "really" and "truly" because they're clearly non-literal. But, nobody has a problem with these because the metaphor is understood and its meaning processed unconsciously. This metaphor is cross-linguistic: "de verdad" in Spanish and "真的" in Mandarin.

This is exactly how "literally" acquired its meaning as an intensifier. Its primary meaning is "real", "actual", and "non-figurative", but our minds have this conceptual metaphor such that we can easily understand its meaning in a non-literal context. It is a metaphorical or non-literal use of "literal".

If this interpretation is right, what could we conclude?

• It is more correct to say that the non-literal use of "literally" is metaphorical, rather hyperbolic.
  
• Metaphors are understood and processed automatically in context. Nobody, not even the most Eichmannesque of grammar nazis, misunderstands the metaphorical use of "literally". Thus, language is not being destroyed.
  
• The metaphor of "realness is intensity" has been used in other places for at least several hundred years, and the same people complaining about "literally" are not complaining about "really" and "truly", even though it part of the same phenomenon. So the ire for "literally" is hypocritical and irrational.
  
• Comprehension and creative use of metaphor is a fundamental characteristic of human thought and language, so fighting this is literally the most futile thing one can do.

Yeah that came across more dickish than I intended.

A love of language definitely tends to produce better prose. Rhetoric has largely fallen out of favor and isn't taught in school which is unfortunate. Writers can abuse rhetorical devices but I don't see this as reason for not teaching the subject. If anyone is interested in studying rhetoric further I can recommend:

• Silva Rhetoricae
  
• Rhetoric Timeline
  
• Recommended Rhetoric Resources
  
• Figure of Speech
  
• Wiki Rhetoric page
  
  I also strongly recommend exploring the concepts of Cognitive Metaphor and Frame Semantics. Learning the basics will change your view of writing forever. More information about these fields can be found in:
  
  
• Martin Hilpert's Linguistics Channel
  
• Metaphors we Live by (seriously, read this)
  

Read this book!

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0226468011/ref=mp_s_a_1?qid=1289794397&sr=8-1

Not so casual and perhaps not exactly what you're looking for, but definitely read the Linguistics Wars by Randy A Harris. It's enjoyable, extremely rigorous (it came out of Harris's PhD dissertation) and very, very insightful: it digs really deep into one of the most controversial period of linguistics in the United States. The author even went through underground notes. The best part about it is that it doesn't require you to be a linguist but it's even better if you are; a lot of things in there you simply can't get from modern textbooks and you get to learn how linguistic ideas originated and evolved. He has a second edition coming out so you might wanna wait for that.

For something perhaps surprising and illuminating: read Metaphors We Live By by Lakoff and Johnson. Most people I know were impressed at how pervasive metaphors actually are in language and cognition. It's very intuitive and sensible once you get the gist of it. This one is quite specific though.

Finally, although now I don't quite agree with it, Language Instinct is what lured me into linguistics so definitely check it out.

These books are quite old now and obviously linguists know much more (although not nearly enough) about language today than they did back then. Claims are also often exaggerated (with the exception of the first one, I think) but they're fun to read and will interest you for sure.

For those interested, this is a great book on metaphors and how they shape our understanding of the world.

Lakoff and Johnson's Metaphors We Live By
http://www.amazon.com/Metaphors-We-Live-George-Lakoff/dp/0226468011

This book/class I took totally blew my mind.

Eh, almost all of it's in book form. These two 1 2 are probably the best places to look if you're interested.

When we encounter new phenomena, it's easiest to characterize them in terms of phenomena we already know, thus we give them labels. The new labels will usually be metaphorical extensions of existing words (e.g. a network, a pulse, a current, an atmosphere of pressure), or new words that come from resources already existing in the language. To make new words we can:

• make compounds, which combine two or more words (e.g. plane mirror, transverse wave; there's also a type of compound called the neoclassical compound in which the elements come from Greek or Latin but not in a way that the languages would have used them, like corpus callosum from Latin words meaning 'firm body' or eukaryote which combines Greek and Latin roots meaning 'true kernel')
  
  
• we can derive new words by adding affixes (e.g. acceleration from accelerate)
  
  
• we can coin new words (e.g. ohm named after a scientist and is a unit of resistance, and mho, the inverse of the word ohm and a unit of conductivity -- the inverse of resistance)
  
  
• we can clip words (e.g. gene from genetic, the adjectival form of the noun genesis)
  
  I get the impression that you're more interested in the metaphors of science. If you want an introduction to metaphor, Lakoff and Johnson's Metaphors we live by might be of interest to you. More directly relevant is Making Truth: Metaphor in Science by Theodore L. Brown. I haven't read the second one, and it's not written by a linguist, but it's written by a professor emeritus of chemistry so my guess is that it's probably well-researched from the science perspective and will give you some insight.
  
  EDIT: Missed a bullet point.

I've just started reading Metaphors We Live By, and it seems pretty good so far. It argues that the human brain interprets the world through metaphors, viewing information in terms of how it relates to other concepts already known to the mind. That's all I can really say about it so far.

The book that I started with was Metaphors We Live By by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. I first read the political metaphor here - it's dry, but fun if you're into the subject. I'm just discovering Lakoff has a ton of YouTube videos too, but I don't know what to recommend.

Edit: I like this one.

I like the word "forging" as an alternative to "mining" as it implies creating something new rather than finding something that is already there. I think at least one crypto uses this term, but I don't remember which now.

For a guide on naming things well (and consistently) I highly recommend Metaphors We Live By, which completely changed how I think about language.

/u/Thelonious_Cube nailed it. You might be interested in George Lakoff's book Metaphors We Live By.

There is an element of truth to this. Abilities are built upon previously learned abilities. Even thinking abilities are tied to "embodied metaphors" learned at a young age (originally researched by Lakoff & Johnson' "Metaphors We Live By"). The only aspect of this is that no form of knowledge has perfectly symmetric learnability with any other. If you can squeeze the concept into a metaphor you know you can learn it more easily but sometimes the metaphor will take you to wrong conclusions.

In terms of "intrinsically physiologically easy" things that can be learned, in the extreme we are constrained by our mesoscopic existence to learn only embodied metaphors that resemble the mesoscopic world we live in. This is why Newtonian physics is easier than quantum physics (microscopic) or relativistic physics (macroscopic). This is what Dawkings is talking about in this Ted video.

We form embodied metaphors based on how we physically interact with our world as children. This is also the basis of the GOMS model for user interfaces to machines and computers (the basis of mouse-window operating systems - first at Xerox Alto, then Apple Lisa & Macintosh, then Microsoft, et al.).

You learn time arrows by experiencing them. You learn basic math by filling containers and seeing the addition and subtraction. You do not see quantum or relativistic effects so you never have a proper intuition for how them work. You only learn about them abstractly and if very lucky you develop an "alternate universe" intuition for them through abstraction. It never becomes "purely intuitive" though. It will always surprise.

I'm fairly certain all languages (even unwritten ones) have stuff like metaphor. That's basically the premise of Lakoff's Metaphors We Live By. And all languages have idioms/euphemisms as well (look at how people talk about death, bodily functions). One possible exception for a lot of things is ASL, which is notorious for avoiding euphemism (though this may be a feature of Deaf culture, not the language). ASL does have idioms etc. though.

A language without figures of speech. This sounds like a good scifi premise. Actually, it sounds a lot like China Mieville's Embassytown.

I don't think any chatbot will be able to pass the Turing Test if it doesn't have a body. Here's why.

How do humans understand one another? Because we can mentally simulate each other's experiences. When someone uses the English idiom "I bent over backward to meet my boss' deadline", we literally simulate bending over backward ourselves, and wince with the imagined pain. That allows us to understand that the other person suffered to accommodate the deadline. Even if we've never heard that idiom before. More about metaphors here.

The need to have a body to be intelligence is a particular stance in AI, known as Embodied Cognition. You can read more about it in our book, or here.

http://www.amazon.es/Metaphors-We-Live-George-Lakoff/dp/0226468011

(all non fiction)

Where math comes from

http://www.amazon.com/Where-Mathematics-Comes-From-Embodied/dp/0465037712/

Metaphors we live by

http://www.amazon.com/Metaphors-We-Live-George-Lakoff/dp/0226468011/

The first one that comes to my mind is an insect colony. Some conservative politicians are fond of thinking of society in terms of a corporation or a factory. Poor urban neighborhoods are often conceived in terms of a war zone or a jungle (especially in gangsta rap!). Tensions between different economic classes are metaphorically spoken of in terms of military battles ("class warfare"). Unwelcome intrusion of government into the private lives of citizens is usually portrayed in the language of totalitarianism or fascism.

Since reading Lakoff and Johnson's Metaphors We Live By I see conceptual metaphors everywhere.

Some of it just recognition - if you see something in a book that reminds you of something you read about in another book, or something you know about the world, or history, or religion, then your mind may make the leap to say "Oh, this is a symbolic reference to trench warfare in France during WWI" or whatever. So the more "stuff" you know about, the more equipped you are to recognize references. So studying history, religion, economics, world news, various natural sciences, etc., etc. will help you with this And the more you know about the author you're reading, the time he/she lived and wrote in, etc., the more you can pick up on.

Note though that a lot of this symblic stuff is indirect / abstract... they are vague allusions using analogy or metaphor, and not necessarily explicit. So the more you develop your capacity for abstract thinking, thinking in metaphors, etc., the better. To that end, you might consider reading Metaphors We Live By, Surfaces and Essences, and similar books.

Also, a lot of "symbolism" is rooted in the thinking of Freud and Jung, even to this day. A lot of Freud's stuff has been discredited now, but from a "cultural literacy" standpoint, it wouldn't hurt to read his book on dream interpretation, as well as some of Jung's stuff. The stuff about archetypes and the "collective unconscious" would be good.

Also, a lot of symbolism may be rooted in, or linked by metaphor, to existing mythology. Some ideas from myth are tropes that appear again and again. With that in mind, I'd suggest reading The Hero With A Thousand Faces and The Hero's Journey by comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell. If you're really interested, any and all of his other books would probably be useful as well.

One last final note: It's entirely possible that all of most of this "symbolism in literature" stuff is total bullshit. What I mean is, you (or I, or whoever) can "find" all sorts of symbolic links in a work, and find arguments to support that link. But unless the author is still alive, and willing to confirm or deny his intent, you never really know if the "link" you've found is really "a thing" put there by the author, or just your own overactive imagination running wild.

I tend to be the oddball non-Platonist who things math is created, not discovered. Math that "works" sticks around.

Two readings that got me there: Metaphors we Live By, Where mathematics comes from. Both somewhat controversial.

Metaphors are everything

They're more prevalent than you think. If you like to read, maybe check out Metaphors We Live By.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Lakoff

(just adding some books some may find interesting)

http://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Flesh-Embodied-Challenge-Western/dp/0465056741/

http://www.amazon.com/Metaphors-We-Live-George-Lakoff/dp/0226468011/