George Lakoff

George Lakoff is most well-known for his studies on conceptual metaphors and embodied mind.  In “Metaphors We Live By” (1980), he and Mark Johnson argue that metaphor is not merely poetic, but is an essential and indispensable ingredient in everyday human language and thought.  This book is considered to be the forerunner of the contemporary theory of conceptual metaphors and has prompted much discussion on the relation between language and thought.  Lakoff is also the author of “Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things” (1987), which has had a great impact on philosophical studies of language in general and Cognitive Linguistics in particular.