Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things
What Categories Reveal about the Mind
by George Lakoff
University of Chicago Press, 1987
Cloth: 978-0-226-46803-7 | Paper: 978-0-226-46804-4 | Electronic: 978-0-226-47101-3
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226471013.001.0001
ABOUT THIS BOOKREVIEWSTABLE OF CONTENTS
ABOUT THIS BOOK
The groundbreaking work that Language journal said no linguist could afford to neglect
In Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things, George M. Lakoff takes on the classical theory of categorization, which argues that the classes into which our minds and language group things and people are clearly defined and have strict boundaries. Lakoff argues instead that the mind and language build categories around protoypical examples, and that categories then radiate out from those central types. The book argues for embodied cognition and makes a powerful case that meaning cannot be reduced to abstract symbols or removed from the physical experiences of human perception.
REVIEWS
"Its publication should be a major event for cognitive linguistics and should pose a major challenge for cognitive science. In addition, it should have repercussions in a variety of disciplines, ranging from anthropology and psychology to epistemology and the philosophy of science. . . . Lakoff asks: What do categories of language and thought reveal about the human mind? Offering both general theory and minute details, Lakoff shows that categories reveal a great deal."
— David E. Leary, American Scientist
"Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things presents some of the most stimulating ideas on mind and meaning i have ever read. it is a book that has far-reaching consequences and is sure to rattle the foundations of thinking and research in the cognitive sciences. Lakoff’s book is a tremendous piece of scholarship and an intellectual achievement of the first order. . . . No psychologist should be unfamiliar with this book.”
— Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr., American Journal of Psychology
"A book that no linguist can afford to neglect: it has implications which extend to all areas of linguistic investigation and far beyond. . . . Lakoff’s achievement is remarkable.”
— Ronald W. Langacker, Language
"Lakoff sets himself the goal of understanding and explicating human categorization in general. . . . Rich, full, and thought-provoking.”
— David Kronenfield, American Anthropologist
"Well worth reading for any one of [its many] topics.”
— David S. Weld, Artificial Intelligence
"The points Lakoff makes are serious ones and will likely intrigue linguists, psychologists, philosophers, and literary theorists for years to come.”
— Terence M. Odlin, Journal of Higher Education
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Preface
Book I: The Mind beyond the Machine
Part I: Categories and Cognitive Models
1. The Importance of Categorization
2. From Wittgenstein to Rosch
3. Prototype Effects in Language
4. Idealized Cognitive Models
5. Metonymic Models
6. Radial Categories
7. Features, Stereotypes, and Defaults
8. More about Cognitive Models
9. Defenders of the Classical View
10. Review
Part II: Philosophical Implications
11. The Objectivist Paradigm
12. What's Wrong with Objectivist Metaphysics
13. What's Wrong with Objectivist Cognition
14. The Formalist Enterprise
15. Putnam's Theorem
16. A New Realism
17. Cognitive Semantics
18. Whorf and Relativism
19. The Mind-As-Machine Paradigm
20. Mathematics as a Cognitive Activity
21. Overview
Book II: Case Studies
Introduction
1. Anger
2. Over
3. There-Constructions
Afterword
References
Name Index
Subject Index
