《乔治·莱考夫认知语言学十讲》概括了作者对语言学某一领域的研究成果；同时讲座的形式使深奥的内容变得深入浅出，易于理解。北京航空航天大学外语系和外国语言研究所于2004年4月邀请了认知语言学创始George Lakoff教授来北京作了系列讲座。讲座先后在北京航空航天大学、北京大学、清华大学、北京师范大学和北京外国语大学进行。Lakoff教授通过十次讲座系统讲授了认知语言学的核心内容以及它的历史发展、与其他学科的交叉、最新动态及未来趋势等。讲座基本涵盖了Lakoff教授41年来的主要学术观点和研究成果。本系列讲座成书名为《乔治·莱考夫认知语言学十讲》，是“世界著名语言学家系列讲座”丛书中的一本。

People use metaphors every time they speak. Some of those metaphors are literary - devices for making thoughts more vivid or entertaining. But most are much more basic than that - they're "metaphors we live by", metaphors we use without even realizing we're using them. In this book, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson suggest that these basic metaphors not only affect the way we communicate ideas, but actually structure our perceptions and understandings from the beginning. Bringing together the perspectives of linguistics and philosophy, Lakoff and Johnson offer an intriguing and surprising guide to some of the most common metaphors and what they can tell us about the human mind. And for this new edition, they supply an afterword both extending their arguments and offering a fascinating overview of the current state of thinking on the subject of the metaphor.