Metaphors We Live By

Rather, what we are claiming about grounding is that we typically conceptualize the nonphysical in terms of the physical—that is, we conceptualize the less clearly delineated in terms of the more clearly delineated. Consider the following examples:

Harry is in the kitchen.

Harry is in the Elks.

Harry is in love.

The sentences refer to three different domains of experience: spatial, social, and emotional. None of these has experiential priority over the others; they are all equally basic kinds of experience.

But with respect to conceptual structuring there is a difference. The concept IN of the first sentence emerges directly from spatial experience in a clearly delineated fashion. It is not an instance of a metaphorical concept. The other two sentences, however, are instances of metaphorical concepts. The second is an instance of the SOCIAL GROUPS ARE CONTAINERS metaphor, in terms of which the concept of a social group is structured. This metaphor allows us to “get a handle on” the concept of a social group by means of a spatialization. The word “in” and the concept IN are the same in all three examples; we do not have three different concepts of IN or three homophonous words “in.” We have one emergent concept IN, one word for it, and two metaphorical concepts that partially define social groups and emotional states. What these cases show is that it is possible to have equally basic kinds of experiences while having conceptualizations of them that are not equally basic.

Experience with physical objects provides the basis for metonymy. Metonymic concepts emerge from correlations in our experience between two physical entities (e.g., PART FOR WHOLE, OBJECT FOR USER) or between a physical entity and something metaphorically conceptualized as a physical entity (e.g., THE PLACE FOR THE EVENT, THE INSTITUTION FOR THE PERSON RESPONSIBLE).

As in the case of orientational metaphors, basic ontological metaphors are grounded by virtue of systematic correlates within our experience. As we saw, for example, the metaphor THE VISUAL FIELD IS A CONTAINER is grounded in the correlation between what we see and a bounded physical space. The TIME IS A MOVING OBJECT metaphor is based on the correlation between an object moving toward us and the time it takes to get to us. The same correlation is a basis for the TIME IS A CONTAINER metaphor (as in “He did it in ten minutes”), with the bounded space traversed by the object correlated with the time the object takes to traverse it. Events and actions are correlated with bounded time spans, and this makes them CONTAINER OBJECTS.