[This is a pre‐publication version of a comment on George Lakoff’s paper ‘Language and Emotion’, in press with the journal Emotion Review.] Comment: Lakoff on Metaphor – More Heat than Light Cliff Goddard Abstract: This comment questions the logic and evidence base of Lakoff’s account of metaphor, embodiment, and the so‐called neural theory of language. It calls for proper attention to linguistic and cultural diversity and opposes biophysical reductionism. Keywords: metaphor, embodiment, cross‐linguistic semantics —————————————————————————————————— As a linguist, what struck me most was Lakoff’s exclusive focus on English. There are sweeping (and questionable) claims about all or most languages, e.g. “this is called Aspect, and the same structure appears in every language in the world”—yet not a single mention of any language other than English. Overall the impression is that one can access psychological or conceptual reality of the human species solely on the basis of contemporary English. Like most linguists, I believe we need to engage with and learn from language diversity. The other great lacuna in Lakoff’s text is a complete silence about cultural (and historical) influences on language and emotion. To re‐balance the picture, key resources from linguists would be Wierzbicka (1999) and Goddard and Wierzbicka (2014: Ch5‐6), and the studies of more than two‐dozen languages included in the edited collections Athanasiadou and Tabakowska (1998), Harkins and Wierzbicka (2001), and Goddard and Ye (2014). One can add the work of cross‐linguistically aware psychologists, historians and anthropologists (e.g. Russell 1991; Fontaine, Scherer & Soriano 2013; Dixon 2006; Shweder 2004). Coming to Lakoff’s main themes, I first want to make some comments about so‐called “primary metaphors” such as ‘Affection is Warmth’ and ‘Anger is Heat’. It would be foolish to deny any association between embodied experience and concepts like “affection” and “anger”, but as critics have often pointed out, the supposed mappings from bodily experience to concepts are not one‐to‐one, but many‐to‐many. The picture is complicated and open to multiple interpretations, and, as far as I know, there is no well‐documented or widely agreed itemisation of primary metaphors across the world’s languages. Furthermore, it is questionable whether complex concepts (or complex metaphors) can be derived from combinations of primary metaphors in a systematic or