So far we have examined what we will call structural metaphors, cases where one concept is metaphorically structured in terms of another. But there is another kind of metaphorical concept, one that does not structure one concept in terms of another but instead organizes a whole system of concepts with respect to one another. We will call these orientational metaphors, since most of them have to do with spatial orientation: up-down, in-out, front-back, on-off, deep-shallow, central-peripheral. These spatial orientations arise from the fact that we have bodies of the sort we have and that they function as they do in our physical environment. Orientational metaphors give a concept a spatial orientation; for example, HAPPY IS UP. The fact that the concept happy is oriented up leads to English expressions like "I'm feeling up today."

Such metaphorical orientations are not arbitrary. They have a basis in our physical and cultural experience. Though the polar oppositions up-down, in-out, etc., are physical in nature, the orientational metaphors based on them can vary from culture to culture. For example, in some cultures the future is in front of us, whereas in others it is in back. We will be looking at up-down spatialization metaphors, which have been studied intensively by William Nagy (1974), as an illustration. In each case, we will give a brief hint about how each metaphorical concept might have arisen from our physical and cultural experience. These accounts are meant to be suggestive and plausible, not definitive.

HAPPY IS UP; SAD IS DOWN

• I'm feeling up.
• That boosted my spirits.
• My spirits rose.
• You're in high spirits.
• Thinking about her always gives me a lift.
• I'm feeling down.
• I'm depressed.
• He's really low these days.
• I fell into a depression.
• My spirits sank.

Physical basis: Drooping posture typically goes along with sadness and depression, erect posture with a positive emotional state.

CONSCIOUS IS UP; UNCONSIOUS IS DOWN

• Get up. Wake up.
• I'm up already.
• He rises early in the morning.
• He fell asleep. He dropped off to sleep.
• He's under hypnosis. He sank into a coma.

Physical basis: Humans and most other mammals sleep lying down and stand up when they awaken.

HEALTH AND LIFE ARE UP; SICKNESS AND DEATH ARE DOWN

• He's at the peak of health.
• Lazarus rose from the dead.
• He's in top shape.
• As to his health, he's way up there.
• He fell ill. He's sinking fast.
• He came down with the flu.
• His health is declining.
• He dropped dead.

Physical basis: Serious illness forces us to lie down physically. When you're dead, you are physically down.

HAVING CONTROL or FORCE IS UP; BEING SUBJECT TO CONTROL or FORCE IS DOWN

• I have control over her.
• I am on top of the situation.
• He's in a superior position.
• He's at the height of his power.
• He's in the high command.
• He's in the upper echelon.
• His power rose.
• He ranks above me in strength.
• He is under my control.
• He fell from power.
• His power is on the decline.
• He is my social inferior.
• He is low man on the totem pole.

Physical basis: Physical size typically correlates with physical strength, and the victor in a fight is typically on top.

MORE IS UP; LESS IS DOWN

• The number of books printed each year keeps going up.
• His draft number is high.
• My income rose last year.
• The amount of artistic activity in this state has gone down in the past year.
• The number of errors he made is incredibly low.
• His income fell last year. He is underage.
• If you're too hot, turn the heat down.

Physical basis: If you add more of a substance or of physical objects to a container or pile, the level goes up.

FORESEEABLE FUTURE EVENTS ARE UP (and AHEAD)

• All up coming events are listed in the paper.
• What's coming up this week?
• I'm afraid of what's up ahead of us.
• What'sup?

Physical basis: Normally our eyes look in the direction in which we typically move (ahead, forward). As an object approaches a person (or the person approaches the object), the object appears larger. Since the ground is perceived as being fixed, the top of the object appears to be moving upward in the person's field of vision.

HIGH STATUS IS UP ; LOW STATUS IS DOWN

• He has a lofty position.
• She'll rise to the top.
• He's at the peak of his career.
• He's climbing the ladder.
• He has little upward mobility.
• He's at the bottom of the social hierarchy.
• She fell in status.

Social and physical basis: Status is correlated with (social) power and (physical) power is up.

GOOD IS UP; BAD IS DOWN

• Things are looking up.
• We hit a peak last year, but it's been downhill ever since.
• Things are at an all-time low.
• He does high-quality work.

Physical basis for personal well-being: Happiness, health, life, and control—the things that principally characterize what is good for a person—are all up.

VIRTUE IS UP; DEPRAVITY IS DOWN

• He is high-minded.
• She has high standards.
• She is upright.
• She is an upstanding citizen.
• That was a low trick.
• Don't be underhanded.
• I wouldn't stoop to that.
• That would be beneath me.
• He fell into the abyss of depravity.
• That was a low-down thing to do.

Physical and social basis: good is up for a person (physical basis), together with a metaphor that we will discuss below, SOCIETY IS A PERSON(in the version where you are not identifying with your society). To be virtuous is to act in accordance with the standards set by the society/person to maintain its well-being, virtue is up because virtuous actions correlate with social well-being from the society/ person's point of view. Since socially based metaphors are part of the culture, it's the society/person's point of view that counts.

RATIONAL IS UP; EMOTIONAL IS DOWN

• The discussion fell to the emotional level, but I raised it back up to the rational plane.
• We put our feelings aside and had a high-level intellectual discussion of the matter.
• He couldn't rise above his emotions.

Physical and cultural basis: In our culture people view themselves as being in control over animals, plants, and their physical environment, and it is their unique ability to reason that places human beings above other animals and gives them this control, CONTROL IS UP thus provides a basis for man is up and therefore for RATIONAL IS UP.

Conclusions

On the basis of these examples, we suggest the following conclusions about the experiential grounding, the coherence, and the systematicity of metaphorical concepts:

• Most of our fundamental concepts are organized in terms of one or more spatialization metaphors.
• There is an internal systematicity to each spatialization metaphor. For example, happy is up defines a coherent system rather than a number of isolated and random cases. (An example of an incoherent system would be one where, say, "I'm feeling up" meant "I'm feeling happy, " but "My spirits rose" meant "I became sadder.")
• There is an overall external systematicity among the various spatialization metaphors, which defines coherence among them. Thus, good is up gives an up orientation to general well-being, and this orientation is coherent with special cases like HAPPY IS UP , HEALTH IS UP, ALIVE IS UP, CONTROL IS UP. STATUS IS UP is coherent with CONTROL IS UP.
• Spatialization metaphors are rooted in physical and cultural experience; they are not randomly assigned. A metaphor can serve as a vehicle for understanding a concept only by virtue of its experiential basis. (Some of the complexities of the experiential basis of metaphor are discussed in the following section.)
• There are many possible physical and social bases for metaphor. Coherence within the overall system seems to be part of the reason why one is chosen and not another. For example, happiness also tends to correlate physically with a smile and a general feeling of expansiveness. This could in principle form the basis for a metaphor HAPPY IS WIDE; SAD IS NARROW. And in fact there are minor metaphorical expressions, like "I'm feeling expansive, " that pick out a different aspect of happiness than "I'm feeling up" does. But the major metaphor in our culture is happy is up; there is a reason why we speak of the height of ecstasy rather than the breadth of ecstasy, happy is up is maximally coherent with good is up,

HEALTHY IS UP, etc.

• In some cases spatialization is so essential a part of a concept that it is difficult for us to imagine any alternative metaphor that might structure the concept. In our society "high status" is such a concept. Other cases, like happiness, are less clear. Is the concept of happiness independent of the happy is up metaphor, or is the up-down spatialization of happiness a part of the concept? We believe that it is a part of the concept within a given conceptual system. THE HAPPY IS UP metaphor places happiness within a coherent metaphorical system, and part of its meaning comes from its role in that system.
• So-called purely intellectual concepts, e.g., the concepts in a scientific theory, are often—perhaps always—based on metaphors that have a physical and/or cultural basis. The high in "high-energy particles" is based on more is up. The high in "high-level functions, " as in physiological psychology, is based on RATIONAL IS UP. The low in "low-level phonology" (which refers to detailed phonetic aspects of the sound systems of languages) is based on MUNDANE REALITY IS DOWN (as in "down to earth"). The intuitive appeal of a scientific theory has to do with how well its metaphors fit one's experience.
• Our physical and cultural experience provides many possible bases for spatialization metaphors. Which ones are chosen, and which ones are major, may vary from culture to culture.
• It is hard to distinguish the physical from the cultural basis of a metaphor, since the choice of one physical basis from among many possible ones has to do with cultural coherence.

Experiential Bases of Metaphors

We do not know very much about the experiential bases of metaphors. Because of our ignorance in this matter, we have described the metaphors separately, only later adding speculative notes on their possible experiential bases. We are adopting this practice out of ignorance, not out of principle. In actuality we feel that no metaphor can ever he comprehended or even adequately represented independently of its experiential basis. For example, more is up has a very different kind of experiential basis than HAPPY IS UP or RATIONAL IS UP. Though the concept up is the same in all these metaphors, the experiences on which these up metaphors are based are very different. It is not that there are many different UPS; rather, verticality enters our experience in many different ways and so gives rise to many different metaphors.

One way of emphasizing the inseparability of metaphors from their experiential bases would be to build the experiential basis into the representations themselves. Thus, instead of writing more is up and rational is up, we might have the more complex relationship shown in the diagram. Such a representation would emphasize that the two parts of each metaphor are linked only via an experiential basis and that it is only by means of these experiential bases that the metaphor can serve the purpose of understanding.

We will not use such representations, but only because we know so little about experiential bases of metaphors. We will continue to use the word "is" in stating metaphors like MORE IS UP, but the is should be viewed as a shorthand for some set of experiences on which the metaphor is based and in terms of which we understand it.

The role of the experiential basis is important in understanding the workings of metaphors that do not fit together because they are based on different kinds of experience. Take, for example, a metaphor like unknown is up; KNOWN IS DOWN. Examples are "That's up in the air" and "The matter is settled. " This metaphor has an experiential basis very much like that of UNDERSTANDING IS GRASPING, as in "I couldn't grasp his explanation." With physical objects, if you can grasp something and hold it in your hands, you can look it over carefully and get a reasonably good understanding of it. It's easier to grasp something and look at it carefully if it's on the ground in a fixed location than if it's floating through the air (like a leaf or a piece of paper). Thus UNKNOWN IS UP; KNOWN IS DOWN is coherent with UNDERSTANDING IS GRASPING.

But UNKNOWN IS UP is not coherent with metaphors like GOOD IS UP and FINISHED IS UP (as in "I'm finishing up"). One would expect FINISHED to be paired with known and UNFINSHED to be paired with unknown. But, so far as verticality metaphors are concerned, this is not the case. The reason is that UNKNOWN IS UP has a very different experiential basis than FINISHED IS UP.