George Lakoff

Conceptual metaphor theory, developed in Lakoff and Mark Johnson's 1980 book "Metaphors We Live By," proposes that metaphor is not merely a poetic device but systematically structures everyday thought. For example, people understand arguments through the conceptual metaphor ARGUMENT IS WAR, saying things like "he shot down my points."

Lakoff has written several books applying cognitive linguistics to American politics, including "Don't Think of an Elephant!" (2004) and "Moral Politics." These works analyze how conservative and progressive movements use framing to shape public discourse.

In his 1987 book "Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things," Lakoff argued against the classical Aristotelian view of categories defined by necessary and sufficient conditions. Drawing on Eleanor Rosch's prototype theory, he proposed that human categories are grounded in bodily experience and cognitive models rather than objective features.

Lakoff was initially part of the generative semantics movement, an offshoot of Chomsky's generative grammar, before breaking with that tradition in the early 1970s. His subsequent work in cognitive linguistics became one of the major alternatives to Chomskyan formal linguistics.