Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Metaphors We Live By 2

Today's "philosophical devotional" was a delectable 3 pages long. This chapter suggests that metaphorical concepts often have a "systematicity" to them.

The metaphorical concept of this chapter was "Time is money." Some examples include "You're wasting my time," "How do you spend your days?," "You need to budget your time," and "He's living on borrowed time," among others.

Lakoff and Johnson argue that these linguistic metaphors are not only conceptual but that there is a system to them, namely, that time is money in our culture because for us time is not only a commodity, it is a valuable one. This is a cultural matter, for time is not conceptualized in this way in other cultures.

This network of concepts thus has a certain "systematicity" to it.

1 comment:

Angie Van De Merwe said...

I understand that the premises of this cultural value is "the Protestant work ethic" and the response of the Christian to the creation order.
Stewardship of time is indeed a universal value. Stewardship of time can also be in the area of relationships. The time spent in this way are not profitable money-wise. Time spent with family and friends does not have value other than sharing of life and love. Should Christians value a specific cultural value over and above a universal Christian value, such as the stewardship of relationships?