Metaphors We Live Analysis

According to Metaphors We Live By by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, metaphors are used for “understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another” (pg 6). In other words, a metaphor is explaining or describing one thing as if it was something else. They explain two kinds of metaphors in the book. The first type of metaphor that the book mentions is a “structural metaphor” in which “one concept is metaphorically structured in terms of another” (pg 15). The other type the book mentions is an “orientational metaphor” which “organizes a whole system of concepts with respect to one another” (pg 15). In this essay, we will look at how the Harrisons and Joseph Beuys use metaphor in their artwork to get messages out to the community about ethical issues

The magazine mentioned that Helen and Newton used a tank “to home mangrove crabs and chart their progress” which was a “metaphor for breaking the integrity of an ecological system” (pg 33). In other words, they were using crabs The metaphor “compost pile is art” also came up in our Harrison lecture, which brought up the concept of viewing learning how to make earth as art. The Harrison’s use metaphors to change the ways people view and think about the earth by encouraging them to think about the environment in a way that they normally would not. In this case, they were using metaphors to describe ecological issues in a simpler way that most people can understand. In our lecture about Joseph Beuys, it was mentioned that he talked about World War II metaphorically, and that a dead hare could tell what was going on with what he was saying than most people in modern society who don’t even acknowledge death. A way that this compares with Newton and Helen Harrison’s way of using metaphor is that he is focusing more on society’s habits instead of how society affects the