The Base Metaphor

[webcomic] xkcd explains this metaphor of relationship and romance.

Obama, Lakoff, and Conceptual Metaphor

Follow commentary on the 2008 US elections via George Lakoff's commentary and conceptual metaphor discussions. Other interests:

• TalkLeft: What Lakoff and Obama Do Not Understand (Jul 2006)


• AlterNet: The Secret of Obama's Success, He Listens to Lakoff (Feb 2008)


• Lakoff's Buzzflash Interview (Apr 2008)


• Obama in a Bind (Jul 2008): Christopher Lyndon talks to Lakoff

Neuro-Liberalism is William Saletan's NYT review (Jun 2008) of Lakoff's The Political Mind: Why You Can't Understand 21st Century Politics with an 18th Century Brain:

Lakoff is a puzzle. No one has more brilliantly dissected conservative spin. "My goal as a scientist and a citizen is to make the cognitive unconscious as conscious as possible," he writes. But each time Lakoff the scientist exposes a right-wing frame, Lakoff the citizen substitutes a left-wing frame. First he shreds Bush's depiction of Iraq as a "war" that can end in "victory" over a united "enemy". Then he repeats each of Bush’s fallacies, oversimplifying the conflict as an "occupation" in which the United States is "losing" to a united "resistance". It's as though Lakoff were lobotomized.

Reuven Tsur on the Heart Conceit

[old] What is Cognitive Poetics? (1982) by Reuven Tsur:

According to migratory theory, someone at the dawn of the history of literature happily 'hit' upon this heart-conceit; from this point on, the conceit migrated until it reached the Arab poets in Spain, who transmitted it to the Hebrew poets of the eleventh century in Spain, as well as to the Provençal poets, who are known to have influenced the poets of the dolce stil nuovo in Italy, who are known to have influenced English Metaphysical poetry. The geographical proximity of Provençe to Paris may account for the appearance of the conceit in Villon's poetry. This explanation is not without geographical or chronological plausibility; but it appears to be too concrete, too uneconomical, and to leave too much to chance. Above all, it does not explain how poets and readers of poetry handle novel conceits. it fails to explain why an earlier poet should be more likely to 'hit' upon a certain conceit than a later one. In addition, the above explanation is counter-intuitive from the point of view of what we seem to know about the inventiveness and ingenuity of the Metaphysical poets.