ABSTRACT

Verticality liberates. Humans distinguish themselves from other animals by rearing upward on their hind legs, despite the consequent problems in the lower back. So, as Lakoff and Johnson (1980) detail so thoroughly, the spatial relationship of up to down becomes a concrete metaphor for a variety of social, moral, and physical properties. We conceive of class differences not horizontally, from left to right (for that would break the capitalist taboo of naming the politics of social difference), but vertically, from higher to lower. So class aligns itself with all the other value differences made concrete in the up-down metaphor: thus high morals, highbrow taste, and high social position not only appear to fit “naturally” together, but are equally “naturally” rewarded with happiness (high versus low spirits) and high earnings. Up becomes a spatial metaphor that agglomerates unrelated values into a conceptual unity that is as politically active as it is logically incoherent: high social position does not necessarily go with high morals (as the Reagan-Bush administration has demonstrated so clearly), but so powerful is the naturalizing force of the up-down metaphor that any contradictions within it are either rendered senseless and thus ignored or read as regrettable exceptions that do not question the naturalness of the system.