Chapters 7–12

加菲猫

This section dives into the different kinds of metaphors we use. It gets a bit technical at first, but honestly, it’s pretty fascinating once you get into it. Structural metaphors are when one concept is built using the structure of another—like “TIME IS MONEY” (e.g. “I spent an hour on that assignment”). Then there are orientational metaphors, like “HAPPY IS UP” (“I’m feeling up today”) or “DOWN” being associated with sadness (“I’m feeling low”).
The third kind—ontological metaphors—are where we treat abstract ideas as objects or containers. Like when we say “He’s in love” or “She fell into depression,” we're imagining feelings as places we can enter and exit. Super weird when you think about it, right?
I never noticed how directional some of our emotional language is. I literally say “I’m down” when I’m feeling sad, but I never thought about why that is. Now I get that we’re mapping emotions onto our physical experience—like being upright feels powerful or happy, and being down literally feels heavy. It’s cool (and kind of freaky) to think that the way we feel feelings is also metaphorical.  
Also, the whole “container” idea really hit me. I always say things like “I have too much on my plate” or “I’m full of anger,” and that’s treating emotions as physical stuff inside me. The fact that this is just how language works makes me wonder what ideas we might be trapped in without realizing it.