Metafory, kterými žijeme

The foundational work of cognitive linguistics revolutionized the philosophy of language and the approach to language in general. The fundamental premises on which language and thinking in language had been theoretically and practically processed and conceived were disrupted by this work and had to be rebuilt. The basic structure of language was no longer the word or proposition, but metaphor, which came to the forefront of the interest of linguists and philosophers. At the same time, metaphor itself ceased to be the exclusive domain of the poetic world and the actualization of linguistic forms and moved in its entirety into the sphere of ordinary communication. At the same time, the essential role of metaphor in non-linguistic disciplines also became apparent: in the theory of knowledge, aesthetics, cultural anthropology, sociology, psychology, etc.
According to the authors, metaphor is the primary concept of the organization of the world, thought and self. The authors draw on the most common examples of everyday situations, in whose internal structure they find similarities with the central metaphors they have outlined, and show their organization. They use many analytical examples to demonstrate the formative power of metaphor: its influence in politics, war, finance, business, culture, and the media. The way they present their interpretation is very simple, clean, unencumbered by terminology and accessible. This revised edition is enhanced by an extensive author's afterword, in which Lakoff and Johnson summarize the outcome of their book since the 1980s, the criticisms and expanded research field of their theory of metaphor, and compare their premises and conclusions with opposing conceptions and opposing theories.
Metaphors We Live By was first published in 1980 and since then in subsequent editions and translations into many languages.

Czech edition