Whose Freedom?
The Battle Over America's Most
Important Idea
By George Lakoff
(Farrar; Straus & Giroux, 277
pp., $23)
Click to purchase the book.

he field of linguistics has
exported a number of big ideas to the world. They include the evolution of
languages as an inspiration to Darwin for the evolution of species; the analysis
of contrasting sounds as an inspiration for structuralism in literary theory and
anthropology; the Whorfian hypothesis that language shapes thought; and
Chomsky's theory of deep structure and universal grammar. Even by these
standards, George Lakoff's theory of conceptual metaphor is a lollapalooza. If
Lakoff is right, his theory can do everything from overturning millennia of
misguided thinking in the Western intellectual tradition to putting a Democrat
in the White House.
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