演讲文本

Metaphor lives a secret life all around us.
暗喻秘密地生活在我们中间。
We utter about six metaphors a minute.
于我们的言谈中，每分钟大约会出现六个暗喻。
Metaphorical thinking is essential to how we understand ourselves and others,
暗喻思维是一把钥匙，它可以开启我们相互理解
how we communicate, learn, discover and invent.
沟通、学习、发现和创新的大门。
But metaphor is a way of thought before it is a way with words.
首先，暗喻是一种思维方式。
Now, to assist me in explaining this, I've enlisted the help of one of our greatest philosophers,
为了说明这一点，我请教了一位当代最伟大的哲学家，
the reigning king of the metaphorians, a man whose contributions to the field are so great that he himself has become a metaphor.
当权的暗喻皇帝，一位因其对暗喻学的巨大贡献而自身成了一位暗喻的人物。

I am, of course, referring to none other than Elvis Presley.
当然，我指的不是别人，正是猫王埃尔维斯-普雷斯利。
Now, "All Shook Up" is a great love song.
好，《神魂颠倒》（意即整个人都被动摇了）是一首经典情歌。
It's also a great example of how whenever we deal with anything abstract
也是一个极好的暗喻范例，它诠释了当我们面临抽象事物时，
ideas, emotions, feelings, concepts, thoughts -- we inevitably resort to metaphor.
无论是主意、情绪、感觉、概念亦或是思想，都不得不求助于暗喻。
In "All Shook Up," a touch is not a touch, but a chill.
在《神魂颠倒》中，触摸不再是触摸，而是寒气。
Lips are not lips, but volcanoes. She is not she, but a buttercup.
嘴唇不再是嘴唇，而是火山。她不再是她，而是毛茛花（一种小黄花）。
And love is not love, but being all shook up.
爱情也不再是爱情，而是变得神魂颠倒了。
In this, Elvis is following Aristotle's classic definition of metaphor
在这里，埃尔维斯采用的完全是亚里士多德对暗喻的经典定义，
as the process of giving the thing a name that belongs to something else.
亦即是把B事物的名称赋予给A事物的过程。
This is the mathematics of metaphor. And fortunately it's very simple. X equals Y.
这就是暗喻的数学公式。幸好它很简单。X等于Y。

视频及简介

演讲简介：

格言爱好者及作家James Geary将对人类语言中的暗喻，这一引人入胜的现象进行阐述。Geary还说，从亚里士多德到猫王都是暗喻之友，暗喻也能微妙地影响到我们的决策。