With due apologies for last-minute notification of the first of this two-part workshop led by Kevin Moore which looks fascinating. In Kevin’s own words:

INVITATION TO A WORKSHOP ON DISCOVERING CONCEPTUAL METAPHORS

When people use conceptual metaphors, they systematically talk about one kind of thing as if it were another. For example we can talk about understanding as if it were seeing: If we understand an idea well, we can say that we “see” it “clearly”; and if we don’t understand it, we can say that it is “not clear”. That is, it is hard to “see” well. But if we “shine some light” on it, we can “see” it better; in other words, it becomes easier to understand. Another example of systematic correspondences involves moving objects and time. If a time is in the future, we can say it is “far away”. For example on Monday, Friday seems so far away. Then, as the days “go by”, Friday gets “closer and closer”, as if days were moving objects that could approach and then pass by us. (These ideas are from Lakoff & Johnson’s Metaphors We Live By.)

In the first session of the workshop I will present and explain various conceptual metaphors in English, and teach participants how to analyze them. These metaphors have to do with different aspects of experiences in life. For example, talking about achieving goals as motion (I am “half way through” the job), emotions as forces (They “exploded” with anger), and importance as size (That was a “huge” achievement). For the second session, I will ask participants to bring examples of ordinary everyday conceptual metaphors from different languages that they know or work on, and we will analyze those data together.

The first session is this Tuesday, 13 October from 3 to 4:15 p.m. in Clark 412.
The second session is Tuesday 20 October from 3 to 4:15 p.m. in Clark 412.

Please let me (kevin.moore@sjsu.edu) know if you plan to come, so I can estimate how many handouts to make, but come anyway even if you don’t get a chance to let me know.