Wednesday, 11 March 2009

Cognitive Linguistics

A cognitive linguist by the name of George Lakoff has done some fascinating (and no doubt grueling) empirical work on metaphors in English literature. He has shown, for example, that we often conceive of the abstract in terms of the concrete: anger is an overheated fluid in a sealed vessel, emotional states are locations, relationships are repeatedly portrayed as journeys in a shared vehicle, and fascinatingly, we don’t just talk about things in this way, we may also reason using these metaphors.

Plagiarised from 'Bad Science'
hence 'Looking California but feeling Minnesota' . The name comes from the Soundgarden song "Outshined" from the album Badmotorfinger (Don;t you just love Wikipedia)

No comments: