Before enrolling in this course, I always looked at words as having one meaning. However I was taught the word, or how I had previously used it, was its concrete meaning. Through some of the text we've covered (mainly Locke), I've learned that, often times, a particular word can be used many different ways and have several meanings. Although words do have their "true" meanings, the way one person may interpret and express the word may be different than how I would do it.
In "Metaphors We Live By," George Lakoff and Mark Johnson explain the usage of metaphors in speech. Many of us, often times without being aware of it, use different metaphors in daily conversation, mainly to convey a point. As one of my classmates pointed out in her post, the place you'll find the most collection of metaphors is in music. Some of my all-time favorite artists are highly skilled in using metaphors to explain a meaning to something and to relate two subjects to one another. Both Lakoff and Johnson stated that it is important for us to get to a point where metaphors are part of our daily language, rather than used sparingly and only when needed/useful.
In the article, the metaphor example they use is "Argument is war." Sayings like these are used for the purpose of going a different route to explain the feeling towards something. A popular metaphor I used to hear almost daily when I played basketball in high school (usually at the conclusion of a practice) was "My legs are rubber." Whenever someone said that, we knew that their legs were hurting and virtually useless from working them out too hard.
2 comments:
Your example of metaphors used in music is great. I wonder why metaphors are so common within music? And I also wonder why they seem to be more common in rap music than in other genres. For whatever reason, I do think it is valuable to realize that this kind of metaphorical critical thinking within songs often enhances our analysis of music (particularly rap). Perhaps we find metaphors more often in rap because it is almost a version of slam poetry. Something to think about!
Your metaphor in the last paragraph emphasized what I personally drew from the reading: that metaphors are engrained in our everyday lives, to a point where we almost do not notice them. Comparing your legs to rubber after working out is a common and usual way to describe pain. We live our whole lives comparing things to other things.
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