ISBN:
9781433815799
,
1433815796
Language:
English
Pages:
1 Online-Ressource (viii 301 p.)
Edition:
1st ed.
DDC:
303.3/7
Keywords:
Social perception
;
Cognitive grammar
;
Metaphor Social aspects
;
Metaphor Psychological aspects
;
Cognitive grammar
;
Metaphor Social aspects
;
Metaphor Psychological aspects
;
Social Perception
;
Social perception
;
Metaphor psychology
Abstract:
"Browse a bookstore's philosophy section and you will find hefty tomes devoted to the analysis of single concepts such as friendship, authenticity, guilt, power, morality, freedom, and evil. Scholars wrestle with the precise meaning of these concepts because they are inherently abstract. Unlike concepts that refer to categories of things that we experience with our senses, these concepts lack a concrete referent existing in the world outside ourselves--you cannot see evil, for instance. It is therefore remarkable that, generally speaking, people seem to have little difficulty making sense of these and other abstract concepts. They form impressions of coworkers' friendliness and authenticity, suffer the pangs of guilt, buy luxury goods to advertise their power, judge the moral implications of political policy, and support wars to spread freedom and stem the tide of evil. The question then becomes: What cognitive processes do people normally use to grasp the abstract concepts that lie at the center of their social life? This book explores the possibility that people understand and experience abstract social concepts using metaphor. From this perspective, metaphor is not--as conventional wisdom would have it--simply a matter of words; rather, it is a cognitive tool that people routinely use to understand abstract concepts (e.g., morality) in terms of superficially dissimilar concepts that are relatively easier to comprehend (e.g., cleanliness)--Introduction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved).
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