View
God's Gift of Metaphor
Josh Mayo on George MacDonald & the Christian Imagination
Often we think of figurative speech as something for the poets, a special way of talking or writing. But as George Lakoff and Mark Johnson demonstrated in their landmark study, Metaphors We Live By (1980), metaphor pervades our ordinary way of speaking: "My computer isn't running." "I didn't connect with that thought." "It's growing dark." Everyday expressions like these, they say, reveal how ordinary language is often charged with figurative imagery.
The reach of these figures in human cognition is greater than we might first imagine. Lakoff and Johnson treat extensively what they call the "systematicity" of metaphors, arguing that especially powerful figures form "conceptual networks" of related metaphorical expressions that are webbed throughout our ordinary speech. Consider some commonplaces from what they call the "Argument Is War" network of metaphors:
THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:
Josh Mayo teaches in the English Department and Writing Program at Grove City College and has written for other publications of Christian thought, including First Things. He and his wife Bethany have two sons, Ezra Wallis and Silas Andrew, and attend Grace Anglican Church in Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania.
subscription options
Order
Print/Online Subscription
Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!
Order
Online Only
Subscription
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more on christianity from the online archives
30.3—May/June 2017
Insider Attempts to Disorient the Orthodox by Alexander F. C. Webster
27.5—Sept/Oct 2014
on Growing Vegetables as a Primer in Moral Philosophy by Rachel Lu
31.1—January/February 2018
on Taking the Measure of the Deserving & the Undeserving Poor by Martin Bordelon
more from the online archives
31.6—November/December 2018
on Childhood Encounters with a Christmas Icon by Rebecca Sicree
19.6—July/August 2006
The Three-Fold Cord of Imagination, Reason & Will in C. S. Lewis by Michael Ward
31.5—September/October 2018
The Rise of the Gnostic Liberal State After Christianity by Andrew Latham
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
