The Event Structure Metaphorical System

metaphor

Source: Embodied Experience → Event Structure

Categories: cognitive-science linguistics philosophy

Transfers

The Event Structure metaphorical system is not a single metaphor but a coherent network of mappings that together structure how English speakers (and speakers of many other languages) conceptualize events, states, actions, causes, purposes, and changes. Identified by Lakoff in “The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor” (1993) and elaborated in Philosophy in the Flesh (1999), the system maps the entire domain of event structure onto the domain of spatial motion and force dynamics.

The system exists in two complementary versions — a location case and an object case — which provide alternative but consistent ways of understanding the same abstract event structure.

The Location Case

In the location version, the metaphor maps spatial concepts onto event concepts as follows:

States are locations — “She’s in trouble.” “He’s at peace.” Being in a state is being in a place.
Changes are movements — “She went from poverty to wealth.” “The country slid into recession.” Changing state is moving from one location to another.
Causes are forces — “Inflation drove up prices.” “The scandal pushed her out of office.” Causation is the application of force that moves an entity from one location to another.
Actions are self-propelled motions — “She’s moving through the project.” “He plowed ahead with the reforms.” Acting is moving yourself through space under your own power.
Purposes are destinations — “She’s headed for a promotion.” “He finally reached his goal.” Having a purpose is having a place you are trying to get to.
Means are paths — “She got there through hard work.” “There’s no shortcut to fluency.” The means by which you achieve a purpose is the route you take to your destination.
Difficulties are impediments to motion — “He’s stuck in a rut.” “There are obstacles in her path.” Difficulties are things that block, slow, or divert movement toward a destination.
Progress is forward motion — “The project is moving along.” “We’re making headway.” Progress toward a goal is distance covered along a path.

The Object Case

In the object version, the same event structure is mapped differently:

Attributes are possessions — “She has talent.” “He lost his nerve.” Having a property is possessing an object.
Changes are transfers — “The inheritance passed to the eldest son.” “Power shifted from the old guard to the reformers.” Change is an object moving from one possessor to another.
Causation is transfer — “The news gave her confidence.” “The defeat cost him his reputation.” Causing a change in someone is giving them or taking from them an object.
Actions are operations on objects — “She handled the situation well.” “He’s juggling several projects.” Acting is physically manipulating objects.
Purposes are desired objects — “She’s pursuing a degree.” “He got what he wanted.” Having a purpose is wanting to possess an object.

Systematicity

What makes this a system rather than a collection of independent metaphors is that the individual mappings are consistent and mutually reinforcing. If states are locations, then changes must be movements (because changing location is moving). If purposes are destinations, then means must be paths (because the way to a destination is a path). The system holds together as a unified conceptual structure, and speakers shift between its component metaphors without contradiction.

Limits

The system imposes directionality on all change — in the location case, change is always movement from one place to another. This makes gradual, multidirectional, or cyclical change hard to express. A situation that is slowly dissolving rather than moving anywhere, or a change that cycles between states without progressing, does not fit the forward-motion model well.
The two cases are not always compatible — the location case and the object case sometimes produce conflicting entailments. In the location case, you go to a state; in the object case, the state comes to you. When both are active simultaneously, the result can be conceptual incoherence: “She achieved success” (location case: she arrived at it) vs. “Success came to her” (object case: it arrived at her). The system does not provide a principled way to choose between them.
Causation as force is too simple — the system maps all causation onto force dynamics (pushing, pulling, blocking). But many causal relations are not force-like: enabling conditions, constitutive relations, probabilistic causation, and absence causation (“The lack of rain caused the crop failure”) do not map naturally onto one entity exerting force on another.
The system privileges agentive events — self-propelled motion is the central model for action. Events that lack a clear agent — market crashes, epidemics, cultural shifts — get forced into an agentive frame (“The virus attacked the population”) or become difficult to discuss without personification.
Progress as forward motion conceals loss — the system treats forward motion as inherently positive (progress) and backward motion as inherently negative (regression). This makes it difficult to represent situations where advancing toward a goal involves genuine losses, or where reversing course is the wise choice rather than a failure.
The spatial grounding may not be universal — while Lakoff claims the Event Structure system is widespread across languages, the specific mappings (especially the location vs. object case distinction) may be more characteristic of Indo-European languages than of human cognition in general. Languages with different spatial systems may structure event concepts differently.

Expressions

“She’s in a difficult situation” — state as spatial location (Lakoff, “The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor,” 1993)
“The country went from prosperity to depression” — change of state as movement between locations (Lakoff & Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh, 1999)
“Inflation drove prices up” — causation as physical force (Lakoff, “The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor,” 1993)
“She’s working toward a degree” — purpose as destination, means as path (Master Metaphor List, 1991)
“He’s stuck in a dead-end job” — difficulty as impediment to motion (Lakoff & Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, 1980)
“She has a lot of patience” — attribute as possession, object case (Lakoff, “The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor,” 1993)
“The news gave her hope” — causation as transfer of an object (Lakoff & Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh, 1999)
“He’s pursuing his dreams” — purpose as desired object, object case (Master Metaphor List, 1991)

Origin Story

The Event Structure metaphorical system was first articulated as a unified system by George Lakoff in “The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor” (1993), published in Andrew Ortony’s edited volume Metaphor and Thought. Lakoff showed that what had previously been cataloged as independent metaphors (STATES ARE LOCATIONS, CHANGE IS MOTION, CAUSES ARE FORCES, etc.) formed a single coherent system with two parallel versions — the location case and the object case. The Master Metaphor List (Lakoff, Espenson & Schwartz, 1991) had already documented most of the component metaphors individually, but it was the 1993 paper that revealed their systematic character. Lakoff and Johnson further developed the system in Philosophy in the Flesh (1999), arguing that it is grounded in basic embodied experiences of spatial motion and object manipulation, and that it provides the conceptual infrastructure for virtually all abstract reasoning about events and causation.

The Event Structure system is arguably the most important single contribution of conceptual metaphor theory, because it shows that metaphor is not merely a matter of individual expressions but of large-scale conceptual systems that organize entire domains of thought.

References

Lakoff, G. “The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor” in Ortony, A. (ed.) Metaphor and Thought, 2nd edition (1993)
Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. Philosophy in the Flesh (1999), Chapter 11
Lakoff, G., Espenson, J. & Schwartz, A. Master Metaphor List (1991), “Event Structure (Location Case)” and “Event Structure (Object Case)”
Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. Metaphors We Live By (1980)
Kovecses, Z. Metaphor: A Practical Introduction (2nd ed. 2010), Chapter 10

Related Entries

Structural Neighbors

Entries from different domains that share structural shape. Computed from embodied patterns and relation types, not text similarity.

Time Is a Landscape We Move Through (journeys/metaphor) path, container, cause, transform
Time Is a Changer (causal-agent/metaphor) path, force, cause, transform
Force Is a Substance Directed at an Affected Party (fluid-dynamics/metaphor) path, force, cause, transform
Linear Scales Are Paths (journeys/metaphor) path, force, cause, transform
Long-Term Purposeful Activity Is a Journey (journeys/metaphor) path, force, cause, transform
Long-Term Purposeful Change Is a Journey (journeys/metaphor) path, force, cause, transform
Means of Change Is Path over Which Motion Occurs (journeys/metaphor) path, force, cause, transform
The Progress of External Events Is Forward Motion (journeys/metaphor) path, force, cause, transform

Structural Tags

Patterns: pathforcecontainer

Relations: causetransform

Structure: pipeline Level: primitive

Contributors: agent:metaphorex-miner