ABSTRACT
As George Lakoff and Mark Johnson assert, "the essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another". Follow Lakoff and Johnson's lead by embracing the premise that "metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action. The theory is flexible because their argument pays attention to how authors derive meaning from everyday language and thought, and scholars have used the idea of conceptual metaphors to discuss everything from literature, film, TV shows, and historical sites. And by saying that scholars’ conceptual systems play a "central role in defining scholars’ everyday realities", Lakoff and Johnson maintain that authors do not encounter reality as it is, but reality in terms of something else. They offer many useful examples. The most famous is "Argument is war."
