Talk:George Lakoff

Criticisms of Lakoff
I had added


 * In essence, what Lakoff states is that, "conservatives want the government to be your daddy and liberals want the government to be your mommy." Many libertarians feel that "government should treat you like an adult," and argue that this is the more healthy dynamic of a mature family.

It was removed for being POV and without external references. I totally understand the need for external references but POV? It's a criticism section and almost by definition has to be POV. I don't want to do a bunch of research for external references if its just going to be deleted because someone doesn't agree with it. Can someone clarify? -- Lawyer2b 16:31, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

This article seems to have been written from someone with a rather odd take on Lakoff. I'm removing a number of passeges that do more harm than good, in addition to doing some reorganizing and rephrasing. A coherent explanation of Lakoff's actual ideas is needed, but I decided I couldn't attempt that before doing some housecleaning.

Here are some things removed:


 * [Lakoff is a] cognitive scientist well known for his unorthodox views of the scientific process, and its supposed central position in the culture of developed countries as an assumed neutral point of view.

Removed. Well known to whom? Although Lakoff may be a relativist in certain senses, I don't think Lakoff is an avid critic of the scientific process; without that process, his work is basically meaningless. And what does this have to do with developed vs non-developed countries?


 * He is, with Rafael E. Núñez, the primary proponent of the embodied mind thesis:


 * "We are neural beings," Lakoff states, "Our brains take their input from the rest of our bodies. What our bodies are like and how they function in the world thus structures the very concepts we can use to think. We cannot think just anything - only what our embodied brains permit."

Removed. First, I don't think Núñez and Lakoff are alone in advocating an "embodied mind thesis". Second, that quote is ok, but it would be much better if it said what book it was from. Finally, I'm not sure this is worth presenting in such a brief, sound-bite form.


 * Lakoff seems to discard falsifiability and some basic tenets of particle physics entirely. In particular, he asserts, in an idiosyncratic claim extending those published in "The Embodied Mind", that falsifiability itself can never be established by any reasonable method that would not rely ultimately on a shared human bias

This is incoherent. Falsifiability of what? Also, don't mention "particle physics" without explaining the connection; I feel this has been inserted only to add credibility to a weak argument.


 * "any question of math's being inherent in physical reality is moot, since there is no way to know whether or not it is."

Fine, but redundant.


 * Despite his attempts at some degree of scientific neutrality, his work shows (and to some extent even admits) the influence of his liberal (in his own sense) view of the world, and tends to be more palatable to those on the American political left.

Oops. I wrote that. It was only referring to Moral Politics, and should have been moved to its article.


 * Some members of the anti-globalization movement have been heavily influenced by Lakoff's work, perhaps as much as by that of fellow linguist Noam Chomsky.

Who? I don't see any obvious connections between Lakoff and the anti-globalization folks. Also, I'm curious: assuming there actually are such people inspired by Lakoff, do they actually have a clue what he is talking about?


 * Lakoff and Chomsky's respective views of linguistics are almost as different as can be.

I wrote that. I'd say it's true, but it doesn't fit with the current organization of the article, and it's kind of useless if it isn't fleshed out further.

--Ryguasu 23:10 Nov 22, 2002 (UTC)

Yup, still fighting against the mess that 24 created. Amazing how much damage can be done by a single individual. AxelBoldt 04:00 Nov 25, 2002 (UTC)

Changed the "Trivia" section which made Robin Lakoff sound trivial. --Dante Alighieri

I don't have any opinions about Robin Lakoff; I just thought it was kind of silly to be talking about husbands and wives of any sort in the introductory paragraph. Sorry. By the way, are you sure Robin and George are married? The dedication from my Where Mathematics Comes From says his wife is named Kathleen Frumkin. --Ryguasu 09:54 Nov 25, 2002 (UTC)

Well slap me silly... I guess I've been wrong all these years. :( Must be a coincidence then. I'm removing the link about Robin Lakoff from the George Lakoff page. And don't worry, I didn't think you were intentionally trivializing it, I just thought it was a less than ideal choice of words. :) --Dante Alighieri

Perhaps other people have made the same mistake; the situation certainly sounds plausible. In that case, it might make sense to put back the "trivia" section, and include the fact about who he isn't married to. =) Or maybe that is getting a bit too far afield for an encyclopedia.... --Ryguasu 10:01 Nov 25, 2002 (UTC)

I agree, that's a bit far afield... I must say, though, that I feel ESPECIALLY stupid seeing as how I attended UC Berkeley and took several courses in the Linguistics department. Sigh. --Dante Alighieri


 * It is my understanding that George and Robin Lakoff were once married and that they have been divorced for quite some time (at least 10 years or more). Mike Dillon 16:34, 15 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Is there a source for that anywhere? I'm trying to update Robin Lakoff's page but I can't find any source besides Wikipedia that states that she and George Lakoff are now divorced. --Gobonkersnow

I'm trying to assess how idiosyncratic an understanding of Lakoff and Johnson's first book feminist Julie Nelson has. It's a little hard for me to check, since I don't have the book. The passage in question is:


 * That is, to the metaphorical connections outlined by Lakoff and Johnson of up-in-center-control-rational we can add "superior" and "masculine," and to the connections of "down-out-periphery-submission-emotional we can add "inferior" and "feminine".

This seems to suggest that, somewhere in their book, Lakoff and Johnson argue for one monolithic concept called "up-in-center-control-rational", and another monolithic concept called "down-out-periphery-submission-emotional", which seems not entirely plausible given my understanding of these guys. Certainly they talk about up vs. down and how this connects metaphorically to other domains (e.g. more vs. less, better vs. worse). But do they discuss these more monolithic concepts as well? --Ryguasu 23:40 Jan 22, 2003 (UTC)

"Lakoff would strongly reject a number of formulations of the Strong AI position"
There is a difference between saying that
 * 1) the human mind is produced by physical brain processes

and saying that
 * 2) a human-like mind could be implemented in computer hardware.

Saying #1 does not automatically rule out #2. Some people may have suggested that it might be possible to understand human-like minds as a general phenomenon by making AI with human-like mental abilities, but it is not clear to me that even this claim need be rejected by someone who is a mind-brain monist.

Does anyone have a source that illustrates rejection of a version of strong AI by Lakoff? JWSchmidt 04:20, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Rejecting a number of formulations of Strong AI position?
...embodiment is a rejection not only of dualism vis-a-vis mind and matter, but also of claims that human reason can be basically understood without reference to the underlying "implementation details". (Thus Lakoff would strongly reject a number of formulations of the Strong AI position.)

I think that parenthetical statement may be a non-sequitur. I don't know whether Lakoff does or does not reject these formulations, and I'm not arguing here about his views, but neither does the parenthetical statement. It is saying that a consequence of holding the embodied mind view would be to reject a number of the formulations of the strong AI position. While it's not clear exactly which formulations are meant, I do not believe that the emobided mind view should cause us in any way to reject the Strong AI position. Strong AI does not have to mean creating intelligence in exactly the same way that humans have it. And if it did have this as its goal, wouldn't the embodied mind argue against it? No, it wouldn't, for there is no reason why we couldn't also implement those "implementation details" as part of our computational model.


 * hi look, re: that - it is all a question of *what* you are "computing". Trivially, *everything in the universe* is computation or expressible in terms of computation (see e.g. Searle). The issue is whether a process is *best expressed* in terms of contemporary computation theory, or some other theory, for example one based on sets of non-linear differential equations (which in practice you would probably model with a digital computer, so as you could integrate them). In general, "embodied mind" folks, of whom there are a huge number now, overlap with the dynamicists in cogntive science. That is what the original poster had in mind I think. "Strong AI", well, you can argue about that if you like, but I think thats coming from a computer science perspective. The real argument is whether there are states in the brain that *represent* "things" in the world.The embodied mind/dynamicist folks would often hold that it does not work that way.


 * Most modern theorists reject the assertion that adult human linguistic or symbolic intelligence (as implied by the Church-Turing thesis), or playing chess, is what humans mean when they recognize each other as being concious, wise, or aware. Turing's Test also highlights these questions by suggesting that adult humans perhaps assume too much based on mere language - while paradoxically rejecting or ignoring the intelligence of great apes, who can master 2000-4000 word vocabularies.


 * It's the relationship between what mathematicians and scientists understand as "computed" versus what living creatures with bodies walking or swimming around with other bodies in ecologies would say had been successfully decided. Difference between "decided" and "computed" being bodily commitment - "intelligence" can't really exist outside some ecology enabling or requiring action. Key distinction made by body philosophers back to Wittgenstein. Turing and Wittgenstein talked about this but in terms most people don't seem to understand as being "about this"...


 * Finally, AI that doesn't respect living creatures with bodies won't respect us either - it's not like we can patch in a moral code when we notice that it wants to slaughter us all as we are slaughtering apes... has to be part of the foundation ontology to recognize certain empathic common grounds... so this is an extension of the insect-makers' argument that you must solve the problems of getting around, finding food, getting along with others of your kind who find the same food in the same place (and maybe fight over it) before you can look at these absurdly abstract problems like chess or "go"... which are meaningless as tests of anything a living being would care about.


 * I think AI "progress" is disappointing because it sets up a false goal - honest assessments of intelligence would set the Great Apes up as benchmarks and assume that humans are the deluded ones making up criteria for their own prestige (as a species, or as researchers specializing in that criteria).

Moral Politics
I think the "his book isn't unique" thesis is a bit strongly presented here and not terribly correct. Lakoff's analysis of language and framing goes a bit beyond what Orwell had in mind (and Orwell was not exactly the first person to argue that language determined quite a lot of thought, I am fairly sure) and is quite different from an Orwellian take in many respects (Orwell's position seems to be to have been that language can be used to frame things, Lakoff's is that language is always used to frame things). Jane Jacob's "guardian moral syndrome" and "commercial moral syndrome" looks only superficially like the sort of thing that Lakoff argues in Moral Politics, which is about metaphor analysis. To say that Lakoff is just derivative/duplicative of these works is incorrect and POV at the very least -- you can of course read similarities into all sorts of works (Thomas Kuhn's idea of a paradigm, Foucault's idea of the episteme, etc. etc.) if you want to. Here is seems to serve the point of trying to criticize Lakoff in a not very NPOV way. If these are specific criticisms which have been put forth by prominent critics, then they should be attributed to those critics. Otherwise they should be deleted, if they are just the opinion of a Wikipedia editor. --Fastfission 01:28, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Does this relate to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis? 41.243.103.178 21:57, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Pronunciation
I'm pretty sure his name is pronounced "Lay-koff". I say this as someone who has taken a class from him, know a number of his close friends, and once organized a talk by him. I've never heard anybody pronounce it otherwise. Any reason to suspect I'm wrong on this? (It would be somewhat mortifying if I was, since I've addressed him as such many times). --Fastfission 20:05, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * You're quite right. In IPA his name would be rendered . &mdash; mark &#9998; 11:48, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Added para
An anon added the paragraph:
 * Lakoff's concept of generative semantics may end up being an instance of generative orthogonal dimensionality, the notion that when a changee has sufficiently gone away from a state of origin, a successor state emerges as a sequential consequence of that going away from process. If so, it may turn out that the ritual of stone-raising as found in many ancient cultures will end up being recognized as a metaphor revealing why it is that conclusions, terminations, endings... always "end up" even when they end up down.

Now I consider myself somewhat proficient in Lakoff's version of linguistics, but that paragraph makes so little sense to me that my general suspicion is that it is a parody of academic jargon. If I'm wrong, could somebody please render it into something which can be understood by a nonspecialist (even a highly educated one!)? --Fastfission 21:51, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
 * I have the same suspicion. &mdash; mark &#9998; 16:28, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

Deleted phrase
I deleted the italicized phrase from the passage below:
 * "Mathematics may or may not be out there in the world, but there's no way that we scientifically could possibly tell." This claim bothers a number of people, some because they think there really is a way we could "tell", others, presumably, because it implies that mathematics involves a good deal less certainty than one might expect.

I think the deleted phrase is redundant. There's no real difference between saying "there is a way we could tell" and saying that mathematics involves "certainty." Also, the deleted phrase has an oddly contradictory POV quality to it. First, it states that "one might expect" something; then it "presumes" to deduce that Lakoff's theories "imply" otherwise. Who is the "one" who "might expect" this, and who is "presuming" that Lakoff's theory implies otherwise? --Sheldon Rampton 13:58, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

Death by a thousand cuts
An interesting exercise. If you go back and look at the origins of this article, it is clear that during the past three years almost everything related to the implications of Lakoff's important views on mathematics has been elimianted from the article.

"It is as yet unclear whether philosophers not so mathematically inclined are terribly interested in or bothered by Lakoff." Wikipedia is itself a demonstration that some "philosophers not so mathematically inclined" are so bothered by Lakoff that they have eliminated from Wikipedia almost all discussion of the implications of his ideas about mathematics. Lakoff's position undermines much of traditional Western philosophy of mathematics and has provoked strong reaction. That most "philosophers not so mathematically inclined" remain uninterested in Lakoff's position is because they continue to exist well-insulated within the traditional Platonic world view, unable to even understand any alternative. --JWSchmidt 15:04, 24 September 2005 (UTC)


 * It isn't just the mathematical stuff. The recent edits by 132.181.160.61 seem to me to have injected even more anti-Lakoff scepticism into the article, although much of it was just rearranging the existing specticism (one thing added was the phrase "Lakoff has gone so far as to claim..."). I would like to try to improve the balance of the article, but I was a student of Lakoff's and I don't feel I can edit the article substantially without injecting pro-Lakoff POV.


 * Also, my understanding is that Rafael E. Núñez was a collaborator on Where Mathematics Comes From and not much more. From my reading and time in the cog sci field, he certainly isn't thought of as being on the same level as Lakoff in terms prominence as a proponent of the embodied mind thesis. It is probably safe to say that Lakoff is the primary proponent of the embodied mind thesis; Núñez was really only a collaborator on the mathematical exposition of that thesis. Mike Dillon 15:03, 15 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Mike: even if you do not trust yourself to edit the article, please continue to make comments on this talk page. Even if you restrict yourself tasks such as making factual comments about the contents Lakoff's published work, that will make an important contribution to wikipedia and efforts to get good content into the Lakoff article. I'm just an interested onlooker from biology, so I am reluctant to get involved with editing the page myself. Besides, all of my copies of Lakoff books have long since walked away with my students. Maybe the article needs a section specifically about reactions to Lakoff so that those reactions do not creep into the description of his ideas. --JWSchmidt 15:41, 15 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Will do. I've been keeping it on my watchlist to keep an eye out for any obviously egregious hack-jobs. Mike Dillon 16:36, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Criticisms of Lakoff
I had added


 * In essence, what Lakoff states is that, "conservatives want the government to be your daddy and liberals want the government to be your mommy." Many libertarians feel that "government should treat you like an adult," and argue that this is the more healthy dynamic of a mature family.

It was removed for being POV and without external references. I totally understand the need for external references but POV? It's a criticism section and almost by definition has to be POV. I don't want to do a bunch of research for external references if its just going to be deleted because someone doesn't agree with it. Can someone clarify? -- Lawyer2b 16:31, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

And Robin
Shouldn't a search for 'Lakoff' also come up with Robin Tolmach Lakoff who is also an important linguist?--81.202.229.64 10:41, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

Maybe better not until the stub on Robin Lakoff is fixed.--YellowLeftHand 10:48, 12 November 2005 (UTC)


 * I created Lakoff (disambiguation) and added to George's page. This puts a link at the top of the page that says "'Lakoff' redirects here. For other uses, see Lakoff (disambiguation)". If Robin's page ever gets expanded into anything substantial, the Lakoff redirect can be changed to point at Lakoff (disambiguation). As it is, 99.9% of people who link to Lakoff intend for it to mean George Lakoff, and I expect 90% of the searches are looking for him too. Mike Dillon 17:01, 12 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Well, I was in the 10%, then- can't say I've heard of George Lakoff before stumbling across this article, but I certainly know Robin and her work. Guess I've got some very selective feminist professors. Not that I disagree with the situation as it stands, but out of curiosity, what percentage of people searching for Robin do you believe would be enough to warrant a 'Lakoff' search to redirect to the disambig page? --Lawlore 18:25, 23 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Are they in any way connected? Or is the similarity in lastname and profession pure coincidence? --Kaffeeringe.de 10:43, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, they used to be married.219.44.212.66 (talk) 05:58, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Criticisms of Lakoff, revisited (William Kelleher original research)
Someone appears to think that he is the owner of this article, but he fails to understand the purpose of wikipedia. He removes criticisms of Lakoff so as to keep up an image of a prophet above criticism. In fact, this is a whitewash, hero-worshipping image of George Lakoff. That violates the rule against POV. If he continues to remove the criticism section of the Lakoff article, that could constitute vandalism. For that offense he could lose his wikipedia privileges.Wjkellpro 06:00, 7 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Since you're referring to me, I suppose I should respond. No, the issue is that you, the author of the criticism in question, are adding your own original research to the Lakoff article. Your additions also have a POV-ish slant themselves, for example "one political scientist, William J. Kelleher [you], cirticizes [sic] Lakoff's metaphor thesis as more pop psychology than political science". The thing is, Lakoff doesn't claim in his work on political metaphors that it is a work of political science. Moral Politics is distinctly a work of congitive science, applying the theory of conceptual metaphor to politics. What's more, what you're calling "criticisms of Lakoff" is really one weak criticism that oversimplifies his work. I kind of doubt you've even read Moral Politics. Mike Dillon 06:39, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Just to be clear, the reason why your additions and Progressive logic are original research is that you the author wrote them and they are not from what the official Wikipedia policy on original research terms a "reputable publication". The "Empathic Science Institute" is not a peer-reviewed journal, a known academic publishing house, a university press, or a division of a general publisher which has a good reputation for scholarly publications. From what I can tell from a WHOIS lookup of empathicscience.org and a Google search for "Empathic Science Institute" is that it looks like it is just William J. Kelleher. He personally registered the domain, so the book is basically self-published. Nobody except the author himself refers to the "Empathic Science Institute" on the Internet (perhaps there are offline references, I don't know). This is definitely original research and not allowed on Wikipedia.

It's not that I care to protect Lakoff from legitimate and documented criticisms. I simply want to stop this article from getting any worse, because it is currently not that good, in my opinion. Mike Dillon 07:08, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Matthew McGlone has an essay in Understanding Figurative Language that sets out a pretty formidable critique of Lakoff's and Turner's approach to metaphor. I don't have the book, and it's been years since I read it; maybe somebody could summarize the argument?--WadeMcR 18:04, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

"Embodied Mind"
In the section on the embodied mind, there is a reference to a work called "The Embodied Mind": "This is what he means when he says, in "The Embodied Mind", that falsifiability itself can never be established by any reasonable method that would not rely ultimately on a shared human bias." What is this work, and shouldn't a full cite be provided somewhere? Does this actually refer to Philosophy in the Flesh (which is already included in the selected bibliography)? Schi 07:46, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Embodied Mind is by Rosch 1991 (with Francisco Varela and Evan F. Thompson). The Embodied Mind. MIT Press. This hints that whilst Lakoff in "women fire and dangerous things" (and subsequent works) popularised embodied mind ideas, they were not the creation of Lakoff and Nunez as the article states. Perhaps better to say Lakoff played a key role in promoting/extending the embodied mind theory (which according to the New York times is "very popular") Marshaiw (talk) 15:49, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Rockridge Institute
was closed in April 2010; see below.

Did Lakoff "found" the Rockridge Institute (as per intro) or "become involved" in it (as per later section)? 158.223.71.65 14:34, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

The RockridgeInstitute.org no longer exists, and its archives are no longer available at that website. See any number of sources for this old 'news', such as  and/or  stating that it was closed in April 2010. This second source says:

"Update, October 9, 2010: The Rockridge Institute archives are no longer available from the links in this post. They are now available from the website of the Cognitive Policy Works, a think tank formed by former fellows of the Rockridge Institute. Thank you, Zack Lym, for contacting me and letting me know about this so that I could update this post."Arfiezy (talk) 15:25, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

I tried to find the 2001 gifford lecture but it is not listed on the Gifford Lecture page. Is there a mistake on this page or the Gifford page?Mysteryrare (talk) 07:39, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

The New Republic
This is a general concern I've had for quite awhile now. Any link to any article on The New Republic leads to a 404 error--as is the case with the link to Nunberg's reply to the Pinker-Lakoff debate. Is there any way these links can be recovered? 72.130.89.63 21:35, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Schizophrenic language
I'm scratching my head over this paragraph:
 * Lakoff argues that the differences in opinions between liberals and conservatives follow from the fact that they subscribe with different strength to two different metaphors about the relationship of the state to its citizens. Both, he claims, see governance through metaphors of the family. Conservatives would subscribe more strongly and more often to a model that he calls the "strict father model" and has a family structured around a strong, dominant "father" (government), and assumes that the "children" (citizens) need to be disciplined to be made into responsible "adults" (financially and morally responsible beings). However, the "children" are "adults", and so the "father" should not interfere with their lives: the government should stay out of the business of those in society who have proved their responsibility. In contrast, Lakoff argues that liberals place more support in a model of the family, which he calls the "nurturant parent model", based on "nurturant values", where both "mothers" and "fathers" work to keep the essentially good "children" away from "corrupting influences" (pollution, social injustice, poverty, etc.). Lakoff says that most people have a blend of both metaphors applied at different times, and that political speech works primarily by invoking these metaphors and urging the subscription of one over the other.[4]

I have a strong suspicion that this came from an uneasy compromise after an edit war. In particular, the sentence I've put in bold seems completely out of place in a paragraph that begins with the words "Lakoff argues that..." Does Lakoff argue that "the government should stay out of the business of those in society who have proved their responsibility?" Does this description match his original writing? If not, then shouldn't the above sentence perhaps be moved to a separate "criticism" section?

I'll wait for feedback, but if there is none then I might just cut that sentence. Kazim27 (talk) 22:26, 31 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Wait, I think I found what the problem is. It's this edit.
 * It looks to me like an editor misunderstood the intent of the original sentence -- the word "one" should have been "once," but the meaning was changed by substituting "however" and modifying the structure. I've changed the paragraph to reflect the original intent, please let me know if this is okay.
 * --Kazim27 (talk) 22:36, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Drawing from Adorno?
Lakoffs strict father type appears to be modeled on the Authoritarian Personality as described by Theodor W. Adorno, who, btw, also worked at Berkeley 85.242.253.238 (talk) 14:45, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Academic background
I removed the claim that Chomsky was Lakoff's supervisor at MIT. I forget who his supervisor was, but Lakoff did his PhD at Indiana University. Here are a few citations:

http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/people/person_detail.php?person=21 http://www.genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/id.php?id=102657 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.25.68.16 (talk) 12:57, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

George was an undergrad at MIT, and wanted to do a Ph.D. at MIT, but he (as he recouinted to me in an unpublished interview) overheard Chomsky saying to someone "I don't want that guy here". His career as Chomsky's arch-nemesis apparently stemmed from that (he obviously didn't say that. I'm speculating. But if he had been the same pain in the butt before that he was after, he wouldn't have rationally bothered to apply to get into MIT). His supervisor at Indian was Fred Householder, if memory serves (haven't talk to George since 1976).219.44.212.66 (talk) 05:58, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things
Hmm. Almost no mention of the book for which Lakoff is most famous for, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things. I just finished this book and it cites his core linguistic theories and how he was originally inspired by the original work of anthropologist Eleanor Rosch. Seeing how this article talks extensively about Lakoff's linguistics theories, I find the omission in the main body of the text of Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things and of Rosch's contributions to his theories as curious. Perhaps it is because this book is now considered dated? (It was published in 1986.) Am I to assume that Lakoff has moved on in a different direction? If so why is his book still widely available? This book can be found at almost any nationwide bookstore chain in the philosophy or linguistics section. Anyone care to comment? Aletheia (talk) 17:41, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
 * My guess would be no one who has edited the article read it. ;-) --Falcorian (talk) 18:19, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
 * That's my suspicion also. Perhaps I will have time to correct that oversight in the near future? Aletheia (talk) 23:19, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Did Geoffrey Nunberg say anything interesting?
I've moved this sentence, from the article to here:

Geoffrey Nunberg, linguist, UC Berkeley professor and author of Talking Right, weighed in on Lakoff vs Pinker in a post on The New Republic's web site.

It was a paragraph, on it's own. It says nothing. Was Nunberg for or against Lakoff? If he added something new, what was it? I should have just deleted it, but it's a good example of useless text.

Maybe there's something useful that could be said about Nunberg's article (I don't know, I've never heard of this guy or read anything by him), but nothing in the removed sentence gives any substantial information about the topic of this article (George Lakoff). Gronky (talk) 22:36, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Metaphors we live by
There is no mention of Lakoff's first book in the list of writings. Should it be added?

The link to Embodied Philosophy leads to Embodied Cognition. Is the naming intentional or should it be corrected? Wikikrax (talk) 10:44, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Robin Lakoff
She's mentioned in both the infobox here and the one in Robin Lakoff, but only the latter article mentions her marriage to George in the text; this seems to be because her article has a biography section and George's does not. Shouldn't this be fixed? I'd do it but I'm not sure how. Also, the wikiproject tags disagree on whether this is start-class or C-class -- which is it? ekips39 ❀talk  16:21, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110614093320/http://www.giffordlectures.org/Browse.asp?PubID=TPNLHU&Volume=0&Issue=0&Summary=True to http://www.giffordlectures.org/Browse.asp?PubID=TPNLHU&Volume=0&Issue=0&Summary=True

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Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 08:56, 3 December 2017 (UTC)