"Emotions are often considered to be feelings alone, and as such they are viewed as being devoid of conceptual content. As a result, the study of emotions is usually not taken seriously by students of semantics and conceptual structure" (Lakoff 380).
I think that the above quote is the key to the whole reading. This is exactly what Lakoff is arguing against. The rest of the text is thus basically a breakdown of how the emotion of 'anger' is put into different conceptual concepts. He is showing that expressions of anger are not random but are metaphorical and metonymical in nature. Thus, it is an investigation into expressions that are understood metaphorically (and he gives many many examples of different types of these expressions).
One things that I found interesting is how Lakoff relates the expressions of anger to common folk theory. That is, he shows how the traditionally held belief that anger has a physical effect on the body has created a large number of metaphorical expressions that go along with the description of the type of anger. For example, when someone's "blood is boiling", there is a reference to the high blood pressure that a person experiences while he/she is angry. Furthermore, we can relate this to another object, a kettle, which also has a lot of pressure inside of it and thus makes its contents boil. So then, the argument is that the conceptual metaphors used for anger are not arbitrary but rather motivated by our physiology. Furthermore, I get the impression that Lakoff is trying to give this reading a scientific air. I suppose I might be basing this on the type of language that he's using but also the amount of examples that he gives so as to justify his argument. I'm not saying this is a bad thing though.
However, I guess I'm not 100% sure what Lakoff is meaning to say by all this. Does he mean that our bodily reactions to emotions such as anger will determine how we express these emotions verbally and that this is something fixed rather than random? Is that the general idea?
Good question at the end there...and I guess I can see how this could almost seem like a science experiment based on all the questions. So to answer you at the end, I think he does mean that our bodily reactions determine the emotions verbally and that none of this is really random but rather has a reason for the connection.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting... people from all cultures are the same physiologically, aren't we? However, we express ourselves by means of different metaphores. Not every language has hundreds of expressions expressing anger and related to phisical conditions (and/or animals). So does it agree with the idea that "our bodily reactions determine the emotions verbally"?
ReplyDeleteI guess Lakoff is trying to say as he mentioned in the beggining that we shouldn't think of emotions as mere feelings but actually they have conceptual content and with connotations to anger and examples he showed that metaphors form part of social and cultural background.
ReplyDeleteI'm confused at what exactly constitutes a folk-theory for Lakoff.
ReplyDeleteTo get a folk theory, all you have to do is ask a bunch of people (I wonder how many?) how they explain something. If their explanations are roughly the same, you might conclude that they are representative of most people's understanding. And voilà, a folk theory! (Folk, because not based on science.)
ReplyDeleteYou could probably find it in a more scientific way (like a poll), but the main thing is that it is some way of thinking that is shared by a number of people, without their explanation being the result of study.
I think Lakoff is simply trying to map out thinking we don't know we are thinking...? I mean, there is some coherence in our metaphors which seems to reveal an underlying way of seeing the world. None of that is in a dictionary. It can only be found in studies like Lakoff's.
(And yes, he does find a link between biology and language.)