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c h a p t e r 8 METAPHOR joseph e. grady 1. Introduction Metaphor has been a central topic within Cognitive Linguistics since the field was born and the term coined in the 1970s. This is partly a historical consequence of George Lakoff’s dominant role and major contributions—metaphor was his focus at the time he and a number of colleagues were defining the field of Cognitive Linguistics, and continues to be today. But the importance of metaphor studies within the discipline is also a reflection of the nature of Cognitive Linguistics as it is understood by its practitioners. If Cognitive Linguistics is the study of ways in which features of language reflect other aspects of human cognition, then meta- phors provide one of the clearest illustrations of this relationship. Since the 1950s, Chomskyan linguists have been devising theories of syntax which largely exclude references to the meanings of linguistic structures; it is nearly impossible, though, to conceive of metaphor without taking into account the connections between lexical semantics, usage, and our understanding and perceptions of the world. Metaphors provide rich evidence about the ways in which some aspects of our lived experience are associated with others, for reasons that reflect basic aspects of per- ception, thought, and possibly neurological organization. Within Cognitive Linguistics the term metaphor is understood to refer to a pat- tern of conceptual association, rather than to an individual metaphorical usage or a linguistic convention. Lakoff and Johnson (1980: 5) describe metaphor as follows: ‘‘The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another.’’ When Robert Frost refers to the ‘‘road less traveled,’’ he uses the words road an