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In Search of a Cultural "Common Denominator": Metaphors, Historical Change and Folk MetaphysicsInstitute for Social Research, University of Michigan, 426 Thompson Street, PO Box 1248, Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1248, USA. kauflaur{at}umich.edu Numerous recent works, primarily in sociocultural history, emphasize the circulation of common meanings across class lines rather than the unilateral influence of economic conditions or intellectual ideas. This perspective has provided a means to better assess the resources enabling ordinary people to construct and change their world. One of the interesting ways to account for this folk inventiveness is to go back to its origins, that is to say, to the minds and the mainly metaphorical conceptualization that are relentlessly remaking reality. The case of the French Revolution clearly illustrates the political efficiency of a metaphorical reasoning that, in the 18th century, led to both the symbolic and the real overthrow of the king's authority. By virtue of the leading role they play in folk metaphysics, metaphors can be seen as the semantic "books" of the collective mentality that constitutes the lowest common denominator of a given community.
Key Words: Collective mentality • Cultural meanings • Folk metaphysics • French Revolution • Metaphorical reasoning • New History • Symbolic change
Social Science Information, Vol. 42, No. 1,
107-146 (2003) |
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