Today I would like to share a link to a recent post by George Lakoff. As most of my readers know by now, Lakoff is the linguist whose work inspired all of my research into metaphors. He is a professor at UC Berkeley and makes rare posts on his own blog. Yesterday he posted a brilliant summary of the metaphors currently being used in the political discussions on whether or not the American government should make military strikes against Syria. See the master at work! Here is the link: http://georgelakoff.com/2013/09/06/obama-reframes-syria-metaphor-and-war-revisited/
Two other quick notes:
I have previously commented on President Obama’s use of the redline metaphor on May 11th of this year in my post on Redline, Backfire and Breakdown.
For more details on Lakoff’s family structure conceptual metaphors, see his must-read book Don’t Think of an Elephant!