Tharmas discovers Lakoff

[Tharmas]

The right wing does not just control the political dialog in the US using emotionally charged narratives, but in doing so they have literally restructured our brains at the level of neural connections. The liberal response, to try to argue against them using reason and structured debate, has been and will continue to be doomed to failure. So argues cognitive linguist George Lakoff in his book The Political Mind: Why You Can’t Understand 21st-Century American Politics with an 18th-Century Brain. I’ve posted a review over on the Hub.

[Pyrogenesis]

Cool. Been a fan of Lakoff & Johnson's stuff ever since I read their Metaphors We Live By (1980) some 7-8 years ago. Their Philosophy In The Flesh is really excellent. Probably the most powerful and all-encompassing strands in linguistics, backed by a huge wealth of empirical evidence, which can provide explanations and insights into almost any sort of philosophy. Therefore many people dislike it.

I've steered clear of his political stuff though. I have the Elephants book, but haven't read. But I have seen his short movie on political rhetoric, which is kinda crude and simplistic.

[Tharmas]

I was hoping you'd check in Pyro, and wondered what your take was. Glad to see you so positive.

The politics is very U.S.-centric, and hence would be less interesting for you from the start.

The cognitive linguistics was new to me and very interesting. He does claim that he shouldn't be (can't be!) ignored by Philosophy.

Also I couldn't help thinking in contrast how rich this field was and how based in physical reality and measurement, that is, how well defined, as opposed to say "memetics."

[Gurdur]

I really am extremely glad Tharmas has raised all this, but I will also add that I got all pissed off at Lakoff well over a decade ago. Grammatical gender was rather a professional hobby of mine *, and so I was always greatly interested when books came out like Corbett's excellent "Gender". Then Lakoff came out with his "Women, Fire And Dangerous Things", and I tried very hard with it, but ended up wanting to throw it across the room. The lack of concrete program was what got to me. A lot of insights but little real development (which is very often the story in linguistics anyway; see "The Great Eskimo Snow Hoax" by Pullum; even better would be the text of an impromptu lecture Pullum gave over 35 years ago in the USA when invited to speak on the future of linguistics and of transformational grammar, but I don't have the text, unfortunately, I've only heard of it).

No, philosophy cannot ignore the meat that Lakoff and others bring to the table; it is rather bloody important and even essential beef. But beef a bit under-done, still too raw. We're talking steak so "blue" sometimes that it could whistle the Republican Party anthem.

I am extremely glad that Tharmas has brought all this up; it has so many important avenues, and is a whole area neglected most often and badly, and not only needs discussion, but is also very important.
____________

* I find grammatical gender fascinating. It is a huge lamplight onto human cognition. I specialised in Bantu languages, and my favourite gambit was to speak on how a typical Bantu language like Swahili has 22 genders. Then I would wait on all the ritual cries of astonishment, shock and inability to perceive how anyone at all could put up with 22 genders, then I would point out how the whole Bantu gender thing worked, and how it was easily grasped -- and then I would point out that in fact German was similar; everyone thinks German has only 3 genders, and they are supposed to be sex-based; not true. German has quite a lot of hidden genders, hidden noun categories, but has only the morphological marking for 3 super-genders.

English also has hidden genders. For example, all ships excepting oil tankers and dinghies are "feminine"; an oil tanker or dinghy is "neutral". Now there's a fascinating noun group all of itself.

[Pyrogenesis]

Well, the meat of Women... was being cooked more than twenty years ago, the entire field has ripened considerably since then, to use an awkward mixed metaphor.*

---
* Favourite in genre: "Once we hit that bullseye, the rest of the dominoes will fall like a deck of cards. Checkmate." (Zapp Brannigan, Futurama)

[Gurdur]

We'll see at this happening BBQ and its progression.

[Tharmas]

Originally Posted by Gurdur

The lack of concrete program was what got to me. A lot of insights but little real development

This is what I was wondering about. When Lakoff talks about metaphor he talks as if this were really what’s happening in the brain – neural pathways being laid down between words and concepts so that they get yoked together. Moreover his insistence on embodiment, that there must be ultimately a physical basis for metaphor, seems also rooted in observation.

Yet when he discusses what we really know about brain function at this level he admits it’s damn little. His own metaphor is of observing a city at night from great altitude. We can see which buildings are lit up (i.e. where stuff is happening) but we don’t know what’s actually going on, what’s actually being said or done in those buildings other than their gross functions of input and output.

What he says about Republican communication I’ve been aware of for years but just as a function of better marketing and media manipulation. Newt Gingrich offered the Democrats a campaign slogan last election: Had Enough? That was it. I thought it was brilliant. If they’d used that simple two word phrase, over and over, we’d have Kerry running for his second term right now.

Meanwhile I have to check out Pullum now...

[Gurdur]

Best to ask Pyrogenesis for which book he thinks is the best summation of very recent efforts; as he gently points out, I'm kinda old-fashioned and out of the loop, and I'm biased against Pinker.

[Tharmas]

I'm biased against Pinker myself. Where does he fit into this picture?

[Pyrogenesis]

Philosophy in the Flesh is their major work, written before Lakoff turned to politics. It's pretty lengthy, however. Still, part I provides the description of their project, so that's a good place for anyone to start. There is also an older overview of the idea of conceptual metaphor available online, but this may be almost as outdated (it's from 1992) as Women, Fire and Dangerous Things. As for Pinker, I can't help but post this link to a review of his Blank Slate that I find myself entirely in agreement.

[Tharmas]

I am getting into Metaphors We Live By and it really makes a lot of intuitive sense to me. In a way it seems like something I’ve always known but never articulated.

I wonder how it “translates” for you as a non English speaker (I’m presuming you read it in English). How universal are these metaphors of direction and physical orientation?

For that matter, as a professional translator, how difficult a job would it be to translate a book like Metaphors?

[Pyrogenesis]

I'm actually supposed to translate his loooong paper Contemporary Theory of Metaphor from 1992, which I have now postponed for about a year. But luckily a group of people from the philosophy department are interested in it too and are willing to meet for discussions to come up with language-specific examples, whenever I finally come around doing it.

For me, a large part of this theory's appeal comes directly from how well it is directly applicable to the Estonian language. It's well worth noting here that Estonian belongs to a whole different language group, so that similarities in metaphor structure cannot be explained away by referring to the same source or other relationships between the two languages, as you could with French and English, or whatever.

In general, what Lakoff says about language pretty much completely applies to Estonian as well, giving further, complementary proof to the theory. In fact, in later works they draw on a wide array of cross-cultural studies, including Mandarin and Cantonese, giving the theory a very strong empirical basis. Incidentally, this makes translating it relatively easy, requiring creativity more than technical skill.

Most of the physical direction and orientation metaphors are basically the same. Very rarely did I find that I could not find counterparts to examples of conceptual metaphors in Estonian - and that was with Philosophy in the Flesh, a book much longer and complex than Metaphors We Live By. What differences there are, they are usually minor.

[Tharmas]

Thanks for the reply. That's interesting and good to know. Philosophy In the Flesh is on my reading list, as well as Where Mathematics Comes From.

[Pyrogenesis]

Another thing with the conceptual metaphor theory is how powerful an argument it makes against some of the most prevalent conceptions of language out there. Language is usually thought of as an arbitrary, conventional, or formal and symbolic structure that somehow "separates" humans from the world and constructs their world-view - that language forms as if a layer of meanings that humans set upon the surface of the world, which then constitutes and structures its raw, meaningless form for them. That humans are "suspended in webs of significance" and are "inhabitants of a new, symbolic world". And that people constantly create mental representations of the world "out there", that the human mind is a "mirror of nature". Serious doubt is cast upon all these exceedingly prevalent beliefs by this theory.