Women Fire And Dangerous Things

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 1987 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. Published 1987 Paperback edition 1990 Printed in the United States of America 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 14 13 12 11 ISBN 978-0-226-47101-3 (e-book) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lakoff, George. Women, fire, and dangerous things. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Psycholinguistics. 2. Categorization (Psychology). 3. Cognition. 4. Thought and thinking. 5. Reason. I. Title. P37.L344 1986 401.′9 86-19136 ISBN 0-226-46804-6 (paper) The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992 George Lakoff Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things What Categories Reveal about the Mind The University of Chicago Press Chicago and London To Claudia Contents Acknowledgments Preface Book I: The Mind beyond the Machine Part I: Categories and Cognitive Models 1 The Importance of Categorization 2 From Wittgenstein to Rosch 3 Prototype Effects in Language 4 Idealized Cognitive Models 5 Metonymic Models 6 Radial Categories 7 Features, Stereotypes, and Defaults 8 More about Cognitive Models 9 Defenders of the Classical View 10 Review Part II: Philosophical Implications 11 The Objectivist Paradigm 12 What’s Wrong with Objectivist Metaphysics 13 What’s Wrong with Objectivist Cognition 14 The Formalist Enterprise 15 Putnam’s Theorem 16 A New Realism 17 Cognitive Semantics 18 Whorf and Relativism 19 The Mind-As-Machine Paradigm 20 Mathematics as a Cognitive Activity 21 Overview Book II: Case Studies Introduction 1 Anger 2 Over 3 There-Constructions Afterword References Name Index Subject Index Acknowledgments This book is very much a product of the incredibly stimulating and open intellectual environment of the University of California at Berkeley, where I have been privileged to work for the past thirteen years. I could not have done this work anywhere else. Much of what I have learned during this period has come through interactions with remarkable colleagues, especially Brent Berlin, Hubert Dreyfus, Charles Fillmore, Jim Greeno, Paul Kay, Eleanor Rosch, Dan Slobin, Eve Sweetser, Len Talmy, Robert Wilensky, and Lotfi Zadeh. I have also been blessed with remarkable students, especially Claudia Brugman, Pamela Downing, Michele Emanatian, Rob MacLaury, Chad McDaniel, and Jeanne van Oosten, and much of this book reflects what I have learned from them. Case study 2 is an extension and elaboration of part of Brugman’s 1981 master’s thesis. Case study 1 was done jointly with Zoltán Kövecses, whose stay at Berkeley during the 1982–83 academic year was funded by the American Council of Learned Societies. Without their insight, their diligence, and their generosity, this book would be much the poorer. I have also been fortunate to be part of a widespread network of cognitive scientists whose research complements my own and who have been unsparingly generous in keeping me informed of their research and in commenting on mine: Alton L. Becker, at the University of Michigan Dwight Bolinger, emeritus from Harvard, now living in Palo Alto Gilles Fauconnier, of the University of Paris at St. Denis Dedre Gentner, at the University of Illinois at Urbana Mark Johnson, at Southern Illinois University Zoltán Kövecses, at Eotvos Lóránd University in Budapest Ronald Langacker, at the University of California at San Diego Susan Lindner, in Palo Alto James D. McCawley, at the University of Chicago David McNeill, at the University of Chicago Hilary Putnam, at Harvard University Naomi Quinn, at Duke Universi