My first experience watching Geary’s Ted talk was honestly a little hard to focus. I personally absorb more information and am able to focus better when I am reading instead of watching something. So as you can imagine, my second experience with Geary’s talk was significantly better than the first. While I annotated a little bit at points in the transcript, most of my thinking was done in my head instead of on paper.
On my first read before I began to annotate I picked up more on stuff that I maybe did not understand very well, or things that I thought could have used more of an explanation. Especially when he began talking about the scenarios in which different groups got different metaphors and therefor analogies. I did not really understand that section but I actually tried to listen. When it came to watching/listening to the ted talk, I noticed I sort of tuned out the sections that I had a harder time grasping.
Something to me that was a highlight was when Geary started to talk about the patterns of a metaphor. It was more of me disagreeing with what he spoke about than a conversation. I didn’t feel that the bulbous shape being identified as one name while the spiky shape was given the other was a pattern. Maybe I am too fixated on that exact vocabulary, but I viewed that as more of an association! I agree it was a type of synesthesia that humans tend to do, but it was more from the connotation of the word than a pattern we have created. I may have misunderstood his exact points.
However, I liked how he pointed out the powerful yet almost unconscious impact that metaphors have on us and our thinking. While literal definitions take priority to us, metaphors are also extremely important and they can influence thinking and decisions in not only good ways. Over all, Geary’s talk about his thoughts on metaphor were very interesting to me and I look forward to learning even more about them!
