George Lakoff

George Lakoff is one of those thinkers whose ideas quietly rewired how I notice everyday language. His core thesis, that conceptual metaphors shape how we reason about hard things, sounds abstract until you catch yourself describing an argument as a war or time as money. I admire that he spent decades at Berkeley building this out rather than chasing one viral idea. He also waded into politics, arguing framing decides debates, which made him controversial. To me that's the mark of a cognitive linguist who refused to stay in the lab and insisted his work actually mattered out in the world.

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Name (English)

George Lakoff

Name (Japanese)

ジョージ・レイコフ

Reading

じょーじ・れいこふ

Born

May 24, 1941 (age 85)

Origin

Bayonne, New Jersey, United States

Occupation

linguist / university teacher / writer

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Gemini / Snake

University

Indiana University

Awards & achievements

• Fellow of the Cognitive Science Society

• Official sitehttps://georgelakoff.wordpress.com
• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George%20Lakoff
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%B8%E3%83%A7%E3%83%BC%E3%82%B8%E3%83%BB%E3%83%AC%E3%82%A4%E3%82%B3%E3%83%95
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q313772

Tags

• New Jersey
• linguist
• university teacher
• writer

Last updated

November 2, 2026

Only publicly available facts are listed; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. Base data was compiled from Wikidata from June 2026 onward; ages are recalculated daily and deaths are checked against Wikidata on an ongoing basis. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.