Whether we know it or not, we make use of metaphors and the many ways in which they help us make sense of the world. A metaphor is defined as a figure of speech that identifies an object or an idea that is similar to an unrelated thing. The use of metaphors and the language that it portrays helps to create new insight and evidence of the universe.
Metaphors not only help classify the culture and diverseness of the natural world, and help interpret the scientific world, but help us set our outlooks on society; however, some may argue metaphors are an impractical use of our language that only complicate things that can instead be stated clearer. Our perspectives and the way we think are key links to how we talk and communicate with our society in the natural world. The ways in which metaphors are impacted are reflected from our culture and society.
This is explained further in detailed in Metaphors We Live By, because it clearly shows how individuals shape their perspectives by their experiences, “In most of the little things we do every day, we simply think and act more or less automatically along certain lines,” furthering how the perception and the actions we take are interpreted by our language of metaphors (Lackoff & Johnson 3). Metaphors affect the way we think and the way we see the world; it is what gives us an opinion on certain matters of race, gender, religion, etc.
We all think and act according to how we were raised, but metaphors as a tool of language, help us guide and changes ones beliefs or opinions to help them view from our own perspective. Metaphors are what identify the various differences of people, not just by their society, but also within culture and diversity. Lakoff and Johnson make it quite clear how metaphors vary from culture to culture by stating “In such a culture, people would view arguments differently, experience them differently, carry them differently, and talk about the differently”, showing how metaphors are shown to have a discrepancy among people (Lackoff & Johnson 5).
Metaphors help us define the natural world as not only diverse in people and their culture, but by how one thinks and acts. In addition to differences in the world, Hothem elaborates the term anthropocentric that Linnaeus uses in interpreting the world in relation to the things we experience and the values we hold (lecture). For example, metaphors give verbal and literal representations of the things that we view from pictures to symbols to images.
Included in Its’s All Wrong, but It’s All Right, “We can never really know how the world looks or sounds through the eyes and ears of others; we use metaphors to convey our experiences because of the impossibility of communicating our experiences to someone else directly”, representing how our own point of views may turn out to be difficult to interpret onto others as they have their own way of seeing things based on their own perspective (Lipsitz 404). Metaphors guide us in defining our behaviors and attitudes of the diverseness and differences that come from the natural world.
We may not notice that we are using this type of speech as it becomes so natural to us, but it helps uncover and interpret the way people were raised and their own viewpoints. Throughout history, metaphors have contributed in the scientific world by the evidence that is shown from the natural world. Our scientific beliefs and our language are based on the scientific nature of our cognitive minds. We are innate to think in a universal perspective and our own thoughts and desires are limitless.
Mentioned in Metaphors in the Rhetoric of Scientific Discourse, Lackoff & Johnson present points that verify how most metaphors are simply prewired, “But if Richards, and Lakoff and Johnson are right, it seems we are compelled to acknowledge that even the scientific thought and the conceptual systems on which scientific beliefs are founded are essentially metaphoric in nature,” justifying that we have a natural ability to the ways we think by the use of metaphors Johnson-Sheehan 169). Metaphors practically make it easier for us to understand concepts from many distinct types of ways.
In this case, science relies solely on the ideas that are brought on by the natural world and how the natural world is the way it is. On the other hand, there are individuals who disapprove the use of metaphors in a way that they should be removed as it makes it easier to communicate with individuals, making it seem that metaphors only provide complex language or confusion. On the contrary, metaphors are not meant to bring confusion, but are meant to identify and shape a subject, yet in the same way have the power to make things simpler.
According to Metaphors We Live by,”… metaphorical concepts can be extended beyond the range of ordinary literal ways of thinking and talking into the range of what is called figurative, poetic, colorful, or fanciful thought and language” (Lackoff & Johnson 13). Therefore, metaphors become beneficial for many to give and gain more clarity about life. They become an effective tool to state things in a more desirable way as well as give uniqueness of comparing things in a better way.
The benefits that metaphors bring in today help establish balance between the scientific and the natural world. We cannot have one without the other, as they both coexist and are necessary for us to understand the implications of metaphors. Metaphors provide a part of speech that enables us to speak without being aware that we are saying them. They are what help us lead and infer new acuity of the language we speak. Without them there would be no purpose of both the natural and scientific world as well as comparison of how they relate together.
