I Is an Other: The Secret Life of Metaphor and How it Shapes the Way We See the World

James Geary

Harper Collins, Feb 8, 2011 - Language Arts & Disciplines - 320 pages

For lovers of language and fans of Blink and Freakonomics, New York Times bestselling author James Geary offers this fascinating look at metaphors and their influence in every aspect of our lives, from art to medicine, psychology to the stock market.

From President Obama’s political rhetoric to the bursting of the housing bubble, from conversations to commercials, James Geary shows that every aspect of our day-to-day experience is molded by metaphor. Geary takes readers from Aristotle’s investigation of metaphor right up to the latest neuroscientific insights into how metaphor works in the brain. Romeo’s exclamation “It is the East, and Juliet is the sun!” may be one of the most well-known metaphors in literature, but metaphor is more than a device of love-struck poets. As Geary demonstrates, metaphor has leaped off the page and landed with a mighty splash right in the middle of the stream of consciousness.

Witty, persuasive, and original, I Is an Other explores metaphor’s effects on financial decision making, effective advertising, leadership, learning, and more.

What people are saying

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - lauriebrown54 - LibraryThing

I have always tended to think of metaphors as statements like “ran like the wind” or “raven haired”; statements that are obvious comparisons. Geary points out that metaphor goes far deeper in our ...

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - TamiCPht - LibraryThing

First I would like to thank you for choosing me to be an Early Reviewer of this book. Being a logophile, I am infatuated with words, their meaning and the power that they have. Metaphors are an ...

Contents

• Foreword: 1
• Metaphor and Etymology: 17
• Metaphor and Money: 29
• Metaphor and the Mind: 44
• Metaphor and Advertising: 58
• Metaphor and the Brain: 76
• Metaphor and the Body: 94
• Metaphor and Politics: 112
• Metaphor and Pleasure: 137
• Metaphor and Children: 152
• Metaphor and Science: 167
• Metaphor and Parables and Proverbs: 179
• Metaphor and Innovation: 197
• Metaphor and Psychology: 208
• Backword: 223
• Notes: 229
• Bibliography: 259
• Index: 291

About the author

James Geary is the author of Geary’s Guide to the World’s Great Aphorists and the New York Times bestseller The World in a Phrase.

Bibliographic information

• Title: I Is an Other: The Secret Life of Metaphor and How it Shapes the Way We See the World
• Author: James Geary
• Publisher: Harper Collins, 2011
• ISBN: 0062041770, 9780062041777
• Length: 320 pages
• Subjects: Business & Economics / Leadership; History / Social History; Language Arts & Disciplines / Linguistics / Historical & Comparative