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Everyone talks about food. Maybe you're so full from your lunch you can barely move, maybe you hit up the new Caribou Coffee in town, or maybe you're craving a chocolate chip cookie right now. Food is so engrained in our everyday conversation, and many of us don't even realize it. That is because sometimes, we aren't always talking about what we ate for dinner last night.
Food is used as metaphor. It is increasingly prevalent in the daily lives of people around the world. Food is a focus for life, and therefore constitutes much of one's conversation and language. Food metaphors are used to describe family, sex, politics, gender, sports, and much much more.
In this post, I am just going to discuss how food is used as metaphor regarding politics. But first, let's discuss the importance of using metaphor. In our English class, we have been focusing on how metaphor is essential to our everyday language. According to George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in their book Metaphors We Live By, we all think and speak in metaphors, and are therefore very influential in our daily lives.
And food is major part of these metaphors. Regarding politics, the most commonly used food metaphor is when one is hungry for power. Now, when a politician is hungry for power, they do not actually want to eat power or have any feeling in their stomach. Instead, they have a craving, a wanting, for power. The feeling that one has when they are hungry for power is therefore similar to one when someone needs food, and craves and wants it. In both cases, they are wanting something to relieve the feeling of hunger, whether it be food or power. Many entities can be hungry for power, such as countries, people, political parties, etc. This metaphor is everywhere.
Now, what does this metaphor imply? The feeling of wanting power is extremely complicated, and can only be described using another feeling, a feeling that is more common to the average person. Not every person will experience a hunger for power, but most people will indeed feel a hunger for food. The experience of hunger is therefore common, and allows more people to understand the feeling of wanting power. Metaphors help us understand experiences, experiences that we may not be able to have ourselves.
If interested, find more food metaphors here. Think about how often you use phrases like these, and how important metaphors, more specifically food metaphors, are.
Peace out, and rock on.
I agree the food can often be the basis for many conversations, especially for us. I remember when we did the 30 hour famine that we decided to not talk about food once we were about 10 hours in, and we struggled a lot! Also I think your example of "hunger" is applicable to many of the situations that you referenced in your post. For example, sports and the "hunger" to win a competition.
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