What we call things is important

December 30th, 2009

Having a mooch around with some ideas I am playing with I stumbled upon this book Metaphors We Live By

A quick check on the reviews was interesting

Starting with the (deceptively) simple premise that the way we talk about certain things shapes the way we think about them, Lakoff and Johnson launch into a stimulating deconstruction of what they term “conceptual metaphors”, and the complex way in which they interact to structure our experience of reality. These aren’t just metaphors in the rhetorical sense though; the authors examine how common ways of speaking and thinking actually reflect a relatively coherent metaphorical system.

For example, you might not think that the statement “He strayed from the line of argument” is metaphorical is any significant way, but it is grounded in the metaphor that AN ARGUMENT IS A JOURNEY, and the assumption that A JOURNEY DEFINES A PATH. Put them together, and you get AN ARGUMENT DEFINES A PATH; a path which can be strayed from. Lakoff and Johnson explore these interactions in great detail, and suggest some fascinating philosophical and political implications.

I found this observation fascinating – as I often argue what you call things is important. The framing of ideas, things, symbols through language powerfully fixes our interpretation of those ideas and things and then how we take action.

It is something that has fascinated me as I have explored the concepts of engagement, and the networked society. This is why many people struggle with 2.0, and get all tangled up as they do not have the right language to define conceptually the world around them. It all sounds so poncy for business people, who like numbers big hard numbers, words are for poofters.

However, what is becoming increasingly obvious is that for many people their working waking social lives are akin to living in a foreign land; the customs, language, symbols etc., are dis-lo-cating-ly alien – they are outsiders, unable to fully participate, as they do not have the comprehension, nor the insight, or the necessary capability to fully engage. They have become concussed observers to the vital world around them. The visceral shock however, is, that this is happening to them, not in some foreign land, but, in their own backyards. Networks you see are not the same as being linear.

Yet – I think people will over time find that our world view is shaped by metaphors and memes. In the same way that real power lies in weak links, therefore the real power lies in how we frame our world, by the way in which we describe it. Humanity is a meme machine.

Bookmarks: