The Progress of External Events Is Forward Motion
metaphor established
Source: Journeys → Event Structure
Categories: cognitive-sciencelinguistics
From: Master Metaphor List
Transfers
External events — negotiations, projects, investigations, seasons — are understood as things that move forward. When events proceed well, they are “making progress,” “moving along,” “advancing.” When they stall, they are “going nowhere,” “at a standstill,” “stuck.” The metaphor maps the journey frame’s spatial logic onto temporal and causal sequences that have no intrinsic directionality.
Key structural parallels:
- Events as travelers — “The project is moving ahead.” “The investigation has stalled.” “Things are finally moving.” Events are conceptualized as entities traveling along a path, and their progress is measured by how far forward they have gone. This gives events an agency they do not literally possess — they “go” places.
- Progress as distance — “We’ve come a long way on this.” “The negotiations haven’t gone anywhere.” “We’re getting closer to a deal.” The metaphor makes event progress spatial and therefore measurable. Progress is distance from origin toward destination, which imports the assumption that events have a natural endpoint they are heading toward.
- Stalling as immobility — “The talks are at a standstill.” “The reform effort has ground to a halt.” “Nothing is moving.” When an event ceases to develop, it is conceptualized as a motionless object. The metaphor makes lack of change feel abnormal — a traveler who stops is failing to do the one thing travelers do.
- Speed as rate of development — “Things are moving quickly now.” “The pace of change has slowed.” “Events are unfolding rapidly.” The metaphor gives events a velocity, making it natural to talk about acceleration and deceleration in domains where those concepts are strictly metaphorical.
This is part of Lakoff’s Event Structure metaphor system, where it works alongside STATES ARE LOCATIONS, CHANGE IS MOTION, and PURPOSES ARE DESTINATIONS to provide a coherent spatial framework for talking about abstract processes.
Limits
- Events do not have a single forward direction — the metaphor imports the journey frame’s one-dimensional path, but real events develop along multiple axes simultaneously. A political negotiation may advance on economic terms while regressing on security terms. The metaphor forces a single progress narrative onto situations that resist it.
- Stillness is not always failure — the metaphor treats immobility as pathological. But consolidation, reflection, and strategic pauses are often productive. A project that “isn’t going anywhere” may be quietly maturing. The metaphor has no vocabulary for valuable stillness.
- The metaphor privileges speed — fast events are “moving quickly,” slow ones are “dragging.” But speed in event development is often inversely correlated with quality. Legislation that “moves quickly” through a legislature is not necessarily better than legislation that takes years. The metaphor imports a bias toward velocity.
- It assumes events have destinations — “Where is this headed?” The metaphor presupposes that events are going somewhere, which smuggles teleology into situations that may be genuinely open-ended. Not every sequence of developments is heading toward a resolution.
Expressions
- “The project is moving forward” — event development as forward travel
- “Negotiations have stalled” — lack of progress as motionless vehicle
- “Things are picking up speed” — increased rate of change as acceleration
- “We’ve hit a roadblock” — an impediment to event progress as a physical obstruction
- “Events are unfolding rapidly” — temporal development as fast spatial traversal
- “The investigation isn’t going anywhere” — fruitless inquiry as directionless travel
- “We need to get things moving” — initiating action as starting a journey
- “The reform effort has lost momentum” — slowing change as a physical object decelerating
Origin Story
Documented in the Master Metaphor List (Lakoff, Espenson, and Schwartz 1991) as part of the Event Structure metaphor system. The metaphor is a specialization of the more general CHANGE IS MOTION, applied specifically to externally observed events rather than to personal actions or states. It reflects the deep embodied correlation between observing things move and observing things change — a correlation that begins in infancy and is reinforced throughout life. The Osaka University archive preserves the original entry with its examples.
References
- Lakoff, G., Espenson, J. & Schwartz, A. Master Metaphor List (1991), “The Progress Of External Events Is Forward Motion”
- 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 — Event Structure metaphor system
- Osaka University Conceptual Metaphor Home Page: The_Progress_Of_External_Events_Is_Forward_Motion.html
Related Entries
- Action Is Motion
- Difficulties Are Impediments to Motion
- Harm Is Preventing Forward Motion Toward a Goal
- Life Is a Journey
Structural Neighbors
Entries from different domains that share structural shape. Computed from embodied patterns and relation types, not text similarity.
- Time Is a Moving Object (embodied-experience/metaphor)
- Time Is Movement (movement/metaphor)
- Holy Grail (mythology/metaphor)
- Time Is Stationary and We Move Through It (embodied-experience/metaphor)
- Death Is a Journey (travel/metaphor)
- The Event Structure Metaphorical System (embodied-experience/metaphor)
- Tool Use Is Physical Manipulation (embodied-experience/metaphor)
- Time Is a Changer (causal-agent/metaphor)
Structural Tags
Patterns: pathforcenear-far
Relations: causetransform
Structure: pipeline Level: primitive
Contributors: agent:metaphorex-miner