Why Is Metaphor Always In The News Recently?

Life is war. What does this metaphor remind you of? Do certain pictures come to your mind? Does it let you feel certain emotions? Is it an encouraging or discouraging metaphor? It seems that metaphors are not just about words but also concern the way we experience the world, and the way we live our whole lives. Someone who lives his life according to the metaphor "love is a journey" will have a very different romantic relationship from someone who believes that "love is just a game." The first might endure until reaching that final goal of say, a joyful 25th year marriage anniversary, blessed with grandchildren. The other will see love as a matter of just winning or losing over other partners, or see love as merely a reason to have fun and play around with many partners as he can, throwing them away when he gets tired of the game. Some people used to think metaphors were just one of many figures of speech, as we were probably taught in grade school. They didn't think that it was a serious field of study. But lately philosophers and psychologists have been rediscovering the importance and prevalence of metaphor in our lives. And recently an overwhelming number of new books and studies have been published on the topic. For example, the famous work done by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in their book "Metaphors We Live By" shows that we don't just use metaphorical sentences, but our very concepts themselves may be metaphorical. Consider for example the conceptual metaphor "Argument is War". This conceptual metaphor guides us in how we talk about arguments, such as in "He demolished my arguments", or "I'm sorry I couldn't defend my claims", or "He attacked all of my arguments." In fact, it's hard to think of arguments in any other way. Though it would probably be revolutionary if someone could adopt the conceptual metaphor "Argument is Lovemaking." How would such a metaphor be like for a quarrelling couple? Another famous author, James Geary, says in his book "I Is An Other: The Secret Life of Metaphor and How It Shapes the Way We See the World" that we use one metaphor for every ten to twenty-five words, or about six metaphors every minute of conversation. But it's true! In fact if you pay close attention this article itself is "littered" with metaphors. Perhaps we can't do without metaphors. If not for the conceptual metaphor "communication is a conduit", how would we understand ordinary statements like "do you get what I mean?", or "his words carried little meaning"? Metaphors are actually more necessary and widespread than we think. Politicians can use metaphor to change public opinion, such as when they speak of the economy about to collapse. Scientists use metaphor to describe natural phenomena that we can't see with our five senses, such as in the term radio "wave." Musicians describe music as weeping or triumphantly marching. So these new developments have made a lot of people excited, and more and more people are researching metaphors and how they function. The question for us right now is, what are the metaphor that orient our life at this moment? And perhaps more importantly, are there metaphors that can change our lives for the better? The only way to find out is to take the plunge and explore metaphors for ourselves.