This paper provides a framework which, being compatible with Lakoff and Johnson’s theory (1980), allows a description of metaphoric verbal utterances. The development of this theoretical expansion is encouraged by Lakoff and Johnson’s distinction between nonliteral and literal metaphoric expressions, and by the fact that they do not provide an explanation of the nonliteral metaphoric use of exp...

Metaphors are pervasive in our discussions of abstract and complex ideas (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980), and have been shown to be instrumental in problem solving and building new conceptual structure (e.g., Gentner & Gentner, 1983; Nersessian, 1992; Boroditsky, 2000). In this paper we look at the role of metaphor in framing social issues. Our language for discussing war, crime, politics, healthcare,...

concepts with increasingly concrete ones: Once a domain of knowledge becomes well known, it can itself serve as a source domain (basis) for understanding more novel concepts (Feldman, 2006, p. 209). After you have learned to think of light as a kind of water (that flows, pours in, fills the room, etc.), you can then learn to think about hope or reason as a kind of light. Ultimately, your knowle...

I have spent the last few years of my life presenting papers on the ways in which cognitive science in general and linguistics in particular can inform research in Information Systems (IS). The works originate firmly in the “Chomskian”1 tradition of linguistics, contrary to the general theme of the workshop. But do we really need to take sides in the generative vs. cognitive linguistics debate?...

concept of divine emanation (as that concept is understood in Neoplatonic philosophy). The insight of apophatic discourse, as well as of contemporary metaphor theory, is that how a person understands these abstract conceptual domains is optional. To view any conceptual mapping as necessary or essential is at best an exaggeration, and at worst an im-

According to modern religious studies, religions are rooted in certain metaphorical representations, so they are metaphorical in nature. This article aims to show, first, how conceptual metaphors employ image schemas to make our language meaningful, and then to assert that image-schematic structure of religious expressions, by which religious metaphors conceptualize abstract meanings, is the ba...

Motion verbs are pervasive. Found in all languages and all levels of discourse (Miller 1972; Miller & Johnson-Laird, 1976), they are highly polysemous, affording a range of interpretations and occurring in a wide variety of grammatical constructions. When interpreted literally, motion verbs express movement along a trajectory, as in Bob goes down the walkway and The stray cat runs across the al...

Culture, considered both cognitively and socially, is among the most durable of human creations. This applies to individual communities of practice, as much as to larger ethnic or national groups. Consequently, designers of long-term knowledge management [KM] systems should pay close attention to the role of culture in creating, sustaining, and interpreting knowledge. This position paper looks ...