《我们赖以生存的隐喻》chapter1-2读书笔记

wenyikk

Reader:文心怡
Reading Time:3-7week
Reading Task:《我们赖以生存的隐喻》chapter1-2
Summary of the Content：
1.Concepts and Metaphors: People generally consider metaphors as means of poetic imagination and rhetorical flourish, not a necessity in everyday language. However, the authors demonstrate through the conceptual metaphor "ARGUMENT IS WAR" that metaphors are extremely common in daily life. When arguing, people use words derived from the concept of war, such as "attack", "defend", and "strategy", and the actual arguing behavior is also partially structured according to the framework of war. This indicates that our conceptual system is largely constructed by metaphors, and metaphors influence our thinking, experiences, and actions.
2.The Systematicity of Metaphors: Metaphorical concepts are systematic, and this characteristic affects our ways of thinking and language expressions. Take "TIME IS MONEY" as an example. In modern Western culture, due to the close connection between work and time and the quantification of time, people view time as a valuable commodity. Like money, time can be spent, saved, budgeted, and so on. Metaphorical concepts such as "TIME IS MONEY", "TIME IS A LIMITED RESOURCE", and "TIME IS A VALUABLE COMMODITY" are interrelated and form a classification - based system. Among them, the most specific metaphorical concept, "TIME IS MONEY", can be used to represent the entire system, which reflects how metaphorical entailments construct a coherent system of metaphorical concepts and corresponding linguistic expressions.
Evaluation:
The first two chapters of this book present novel and inspiring viewpoints, revealing the crucial role of metaphors in human cognition from a completely new perspective. Through rich and vivid language examples such as "ARGUMENT IS WAR" and "TIME IS MONEY", the authors effectively demonstrate the universality and systematicity of metaphors in the conceptual system of daily life. This enables readers to clearly understand that metaphors are not merely a form of linguistic decoration but rather cognitive tools that penetrate into the levels of thinking and action. This re-interpretation of metaphors breaks the traditional narrow understanding of them and opens up new paths for research in fields such as linguistics, philosophy, and cognitive science. However, when arguing for the universality of metaphors, some parts of the book discuss cultural differences relatively briefly. The manifestations and understandings of metaphors may vary greatly across different cultures. Although the authors mention that certain metaphorical concepts are related to culture, they do not conduct in-depth cross-cultural comparative analyses. This may cause some confusion for readers when trying to understand the relationship between the universality of metaphors and cultural specificity.
Reflection：
The content of these two chapters pushes us to re-examine our daily language and ways of thinking. In our daily communication, we often use metaphors unconsciously without being aware of the profound cognitive mechanisms behind them. For example, when we say "time flies," we are using the metaphorical concept "TIME IS A MOVING OBJECT". Recognizing this can help us better understand the nature of language and the operation of the human mind. In cross-cultural communication, differences in metaphorical concepts across different cultures may lead to obstacles in understanding. For instance, in some cultures, time may not be conceptualized as money or a limited resource. Therefore, when communicating, we need to pay more attention to the cultural background of metaphors to avoid misunderstandings.