Block That Metaphor!
Post date: 10.02.06
Issue date: 10.09.06 Whose Freedom?
The Battle Over America's Most Important Idea
By George Lakoff
(Farrar; Straus & Giroux, 277 pp., $23)
Click here 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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