Published by Harper Perennial, 2012, softcover, illustrated, index, 297 pages, condition: new.
For lovers of language and fans of Blink and Freakonomics , New York Times bestselling author James Geary offers this fascinating look at metaphors and their influence in every aspect of our lives, from art to medicine, psychology to the stock market. From President Obamas political rhetoric to the bursting of the housing bubble, from conversations to commercials, James Geary shows that every aspect of our day-to-day experience is molded by metaphor. Geary takes readers from Aristotles investigation of metaphor right up to the latest neuroscientific insights into how metaphor works in the brain. Romeos exclamation It is the East, and Juliet is the sun! may be one of the most well-known metaphors in literature, but metaphor is more than a device of love-struck poets. As Geary demonstrates, metaphor has leaped off the page and landed with a mighty splash right in the middle of the stream of consciousness. Witty, persuasive, and original, I Is an Other explores metaphors effects on financial decision making, effective advertising, leadership, learning, and more.
Thank you, James Geary! By writing this elegant, concise, clear account of the central role that metaphor plays, not just in how we speak and communicate, but also in how we think, you have liberated me.
I love this book. When I first skimmed it, I came across "he was deeply in Love. when she spoke he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up." And I was hooked (oops, another metaphor!). A key point in this book is that we use metaphor without realising it and in fact our language is pretty much made up of phrases that once were metaphor and became cliche that we accept them as part of our language in the same way 'bread' means bread. Every new word created is somehow a metaphor for some thing(s) else that its like! There's a mixture of light-hearted commonplace phrases contrasted with scientific explanations of language construction. This book is a pearl: Admire it's beauty and see how the layers reveal the truth of our language
