Editing Metaphor (section)

=== Conceptual metaphors ===
{{Main|Conceptual metaphor}}

Some theorists have suggested that metaphors are not merely stylistic, but are also cognitively important. In ''[[Metaphors We Live By]]'' (1980), [[George Lakoff]] and [[Mark Johnson (professor)|Mark Johnson]] argue that metaphors are pervasive in everyday life, not only in language but also in thought and action. A common definition of metaphor presents it as a comparison that shows how two things, which are not alike in most ways, are similar in another important way. In this context, metaphors contribute to the creation of multiple meanings within [[Polysemy|polysemic]] complexes across different languages.<ref>{{Cite journal | last =Зибин | first =Асиль | last2 =Халифа | first2 =Лама | last3 =Алтахайне | first3= Абдель Рахман Митиб | date =2024 | title =The role of metaphor in creating polysemy complexes in Jordanian Arabic and American English | url =https://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/the-role-of-metaphor-in-creating-polysemy-complexes-in-jordanian-arabic-and-american-english | journal =Russian Journal of Linguistics | volume =28 | issue =1 | pages =80–101 | issn =2312-9182}}</ref> Furthermore, Lakoff and Johnson explain that a metaphor is essentially the understanding and experiencing of one kind of thing in terms of another, which they refer to as a "conduit metaphor". According to this view, a speaker can put ideas or objects into containers and then send them along a conduit to a listener, who removes the object from the container to make meaning of it. Thus, communication is conceptualized as something that ideas flow into, with the container being separate from the ideas themselves. Lakoff and Johnson provide several examples of daily metaphors in use, including "argument is war" and "time is money". These metaphors occur widely in various contexts to express personal meanings. In addition, the authors suggest that communication can be viewed as a machine: "Communication is not what one does with the machine, but is the machine itself."<ref>Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. ''Metaphors We Live By'' (IL: [[University of Chicago Press]], 1980), Chapters 1–3. (pp. 3–13).</ref>

Moreover, experimental evidence shows that "priming" people with material from one area can influence how they perform tasks and interpret language in a metaphorically related area.{{NoteTag|"In sum, there are now numerous results from comprehension-oriented studies suggesting that (1) comprehending metaphorical language activates concrete source domain concepts, and that (2) activating particular concrete perceptual or motor knowledge affects subsequent reasoning and language comprehension about a metaphorically connected abstract domain"<ref>{{cite journal | last1 =Sato | first1 =Manami | last2 =Schafer | first2 = Amy J. | last3 =Bergen | first3 = Benjamin K. | title = Metaphor priming in sentence production: Concrete pictures affect abstract language production | url = https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2014.09.010 | journal = Acta Psychologica | year =2015 | volume =156 | pages =136–142 | doi =10.1016/j.actpsy.2014.09.010 | pmid =25443987 | issn =0001-6918| url-access =subscription }}</ref>}}

Omnipresent metaphor may provide an indicator for researching the functionality of language.<ref>
{{cite book
 |last1                = Way
 |first1               = Eileen Cornell
 |date                 = 14 March 2013
 |orig-date            = 1991
 |title                = Knowledge Representation and Metaphor
 |url                  = https://books.google.com/books?id=Mh_UBgAAQBAJ
 |series               = Studies in Cognitive Systems, volume 7
 |publisher            = Springer Science & Business Media
 |page                 = 2
 |chapter              = The literal and the metaphoric
 |isbn                 = 9789401579414
 |access-date          = 9 February 2025
 |quote                = [...] the kind of category shifting and concept merging that goes on in metaphor may turn out to be a better clue for how language operates than literal speech. [...]  metaphor pervades everyday speech to such an extent that we are rarely aware of its presence . 
}} 
</ref>