Root metaphors are buried cultural assumptions reproduced unconsciously across generations

Evidence

A key—and often ignored—form of metaphor is called a “root metaphor.” As suggested by the plant analogy here, root metaphors are the buried ideological sources from which the culture draws strength and reproduces itself inter-generationally, often over hundreds of years. As the visible foliage of a plant draws sustenance from its hidden roots, so the obvious aspects of a culture draw their inspiration from ideological roots that are hidden both by time and by the power of being unconsciously assumed, or “taken for granted.” Taken-for-granted assumptions are all those ideas that we take to be so obviously “true” that we don’t have to think about them. — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education, 514

Categorization

• DEFINE: Precise definition of ‘root metaphor’ — core terminology this textbook must establish for teachers.
• XREF: Directly operationalizes Bowers’ root-metaphor theory from earlier in the polyad into a teachable definition. — connects to: Root metaphors combine into culturally inherited discourses and discursive practices — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 525; Discourses are systems of shared cultural meanings built from interlocking root metaphors. — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 665; Educational reform programs inherit Enlightenment root metaphors that frame nature as adversary — C. A. Bowers, Educating for Eco-Justice and Community, 6585 (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Language preserves fossilized worldviews within its living metaphors #corroborates (0.88) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1599
• The body-as-metaphor legitimated social hierarchy as naturally given #exemplifies (0.85)
• Western epistemology’s root metaphors sexualize and dominate the known #corroborates (0.82) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1352
• Ritualistic, unconscious devices structure literary form and decay with social fragmentation #corroborates (0.78) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 144