I've read the book and I find the first half great. It demonstrates the ubiquity of metaphor in language.

But its reach seriously exceeds its grasp. The book makes all kinds of bizarre claims. For example:

> the predominant implicit metaphor behind "argument" is battle/war/conflict, we intuit that there must be a "winner" and that we must "defeat" the "opponent" and other nasty implications

The reason we use war as a metaphor for argument is because wars and arguments are similar in an important way. They are methods of producing a decision when there is disagreement. That is: "war is the continuation of politics by other means". In the book, Lakoff makes the bizarre argument (I'm paraphrasing) "why can't we think of arguments like a dance?" Well, George, because a dance doesn't decide anything whereas arguments and wars do.

You can wax poetic about "collaborative exploration" all you like but the real question is, given a fork in the road, do we go right or left?

That’s a valid point. But many “arguments” are not about a decision and are better thought of as exploration or discussion yet they are labeled “ARGUMENT” and that creates a posture exactly as you describe which results in the parties fighting to win rather than engaging in a curious dialogue about all elements of the debate.

I agree that the metaphor of war/battle/conflict is appropriate in numerous scenarios of arguments.

I took away from the book the (I think) important point that if you have different goals (than fight) but use the word "argument", many people can buy into the (wrong) metaphor and you are now cross purposes.

> Because of this I often make explicit when I converse that I'm engaging in a "collaborative exploration" and not an fight about who is right.

Have you found that successful? One of my big struggles in my social life is that I am quite curious how things are and more often than not my discussion/arguments are interpreted somehow so that I supposedly want to show my "opponent" is wrong. And really, most of the time, who is right and who is wrong is one of the last things crossing my mind.

I had the same problem my whole life up until about two years ago. For whatever reason my default mindset was that when I heard something I didn't understand or was curious about, I would explain my understanding and frame that against what I thought was wrong about their understanding. I then expected them to respond in a similar way. To the majority of people this seems confrontational and argumentative, so everyone just thought I was being a know it all jerk.

I changed to only asking questions and/or mirroring back what they said. The change in strategy answers my curiosities and helps people to feel like you are listening to them and care about what they have to say. Hope it helps.

Curiosity requires a degree of comfort in being wrong and confidence in yourself. Unfortunately many people think if they are “wrong” or don’t know something they are stupid and so asking questions makes them feel that they are wrong and thus stupid. Once you empathize with them it’s easier to navigate just as you discovered.

One great technique for understanding others (and often as a bonus also showing them they don't know what they are talking about) is to simply ask for the mechanism they are describing.

So when someone is in favor of policy X, ask them how X accomplishes the goal they are in favor of -- what is the cause-effect chain.

This (at least according to psychologists' research) usually makes people more cognizant of the gaps in their understanding, and also more receptive to alternative solutions or explanations.

Perhaps tone and word choice can help here, as well as communicating your pretext. Also, just because you’re curious doesn’t mean others share the same curiosity in the moment… depending on how and what you probe you can be irritating even if that’s not your intention.

I cannot stand Lakoff, having read Don't Think of an Elephant years ago.

No, the reason Americans felt September 11th so deeply isn't because the Twin Towers were "phallic" imagery, nor was it because planes "penetrated" the "vaginal image" of the Pentagon in a "plume of heat."

He seems important to folks who study in the field, so maybe I shouldn't judge him on one book, but I don't get the hype.