Metaphor

The article read for today discusses the idea that metaphor is more relative to everyday life than most people actually understand. The general notion of metaphor is understanding as one kind of thing in terms of another.  In the article this idea is conceptualized with "argument is war". This doesn't mean that argument is physically the same thing as a war, we can understand this, there are no casualties and bombings in argument but there are metaphorical casualties and bombings. For example, "he shot down all my ideas", "His criticisms were right on target".

Time is money, was another metaphor discussed in the article. It points out how valuable time is to our culture. We speak of time in terms of it being wasted, spent, budgeted and saved. We pay people who work according to time, either by yearly salary, by hours or days. Time is a limited resource in our culture and the most direct way that we express this is through our use of metaphors. The article made sure to express that this is a cultural thing, time is not as important to every culture. One of the best ways i think this is represented is jail or prison. Widely referred to as serving time. I never really understood the concept of this metaphor until reading this article. When we as Americans get in trouble with the law we have to pay for that,  we get punished. The American court system measures the issued punishment in time. The harsher the crime the more time you have to pay. In other words, you are paying for your crime with time from your life.
Other metaphors that are physical in nature such as polar up/down have been naturally adopted by nature. Such as he fell asleep, or he is lying down, or good is up and down is bad. These types of metaphors have actually been constructed from the observations of nature.