George Lakoff, Mark Johnson: Metaphors We Live By
Metaphors We Live By, from its back cover: “[Metaphors] are not mere poetical or rhetorical embellishments, [the authors] hold, but are part of everyday speech that affects the ways in which we perceive, think, and act. Reality itself is defined by metaphor, and as metaphors vary from culture to culture, so do the realities they define.” (Via Jonas Söderström, in a comment thread at Gustav Holmberg’s weblog.)