What is an idea-as-person metaphor?

What is an idea-as-person metaphor?

Definition
	A conventional metaphor in which an idea is represented as a person in comparisons such as the following:
	the birth, life, and death of the person represent the production, currency, and discarding of the idea the person's giving birth represents the productivity of an idea in leading to other ideas

Examples
	Here are some examples in English:
	He is the father of modern biology. Whose brainchild was that? Those ideas died off in the Middle Ages. Cognitive psychology is still in its infancy.

Generic
	An idea-as-person metaphor is a kind of
	What is a metaphor for rational processes?

Source
	Lakoff, G. and Johnson 1980

Context for this page:

Concept module: idea-as-person metaphor
In modular book: Metaphors in English, by Eugene E. Loos (general editor), Susan Anderson (editor), Dwight H. Day, Jr. (editor), Paul C. Jordan (editor), and J. Douglas Wingate (editor)
In bookshelf: Lexicon

This page is an extract from the LinguaLinks Library, Version 4.0, published on CD-ROM by SIL International, 1999. [Ordering information.]

Page content last modified: 18 September 1998

© 1999 SIL International