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Metaphors in Language and Thought

Although Metaphors belong rather to the field of semantics, it is necessary to discuss some concepts of metaphor in detail. Lakoff and Johnson define the essence of metaphors as understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another (5). While their approach considers metaphors not only as a means of figurative language but also as a concept which is pervasive in everyday language and thought (ix), other linguists claim that Lakoff and Johnson mainly deal with dead metaphors (Saeed 16). Nevertheless, Lakoff and Johnson's points will be outlined in the following, providing a framework for the discussion of the desktop metaphor.
Lakoff and Johnson propose three properties of metaphors:

Metaphors have entailments through which they highlight and make coherent certain aspects of experience.

A given metaphor may be the only way to highlight and coherently organize exactly those aspects of our experience.

Metaphors may create realities for us, especially social realities. A metaphor may thus be a guide for future action. Such actions will, of course, fit the metaphor. This will, in turn, reinforce the power of the metaphor to make experience coherent. In this sense metaphors can be self-fullfilling prophecies. (156)

Regarding the first point, Lakoff and Johnson argue that by using a metaphor, some aspects of a domain are highlighted whereas others are hidden. They give the example of the metaphor ARGUMENT IS WAR, in which the aspect of a battle (the source domain) is highlighted, and the aspect of the target domain, argument as a cooperative interaction, is hidden (10). Coherence rather than consistency is more likely to be found in the connections between metaphors (44). While time can be seen as an object moving towards us, it may also be regarded as a stationary object through which we move towards the future. Although these metaphors are not consistent, they are coherent since each is a subcategory of the major category TIME GOES PAST US.
The second point suggested by Lakoff and Johnson summarizes their approach of interpreting perceived similarities as a result of conventional metaphors which are a part of our conceptual system. For example, since it takes both time and labor to accomplish a task, time can metaphorically be seen as a valueable resource. This corresponds to what has been said in section 3.2.1.
As a consequence, if experiences are categorized in terms of metaphors, and, in addition, these metaphors highlight certain aspects, these metaphors create a reality, as stated in Lakoff's and Johnson's third point. When time is understood as a valueable resource, it is likely that this has an impact on the way time is planned.

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