Whether or not Lakoff is right in a strong sense (all language is metaphors!), it seems relevant to this discussion that most things we talk about that are not part of very simple, direct experiences are done so metaphorically, and even much of direct experience is still talked about metaphorically. For example, English and many languages have only metaphors for talking about time such that there are few to no ways to talk about time as itself rather than as a metaphor for something else (distance, size, finite resource, etc.), yet time would seem to be something we have direct experience with.
If everything is metaphors, then it seems likely that we should expect to be able to switch metaphors and thus equivocate by changing what a word means by changing the metaphors that support it.
Whether or not Lakoff is right in a strong sense (all language is metaphors!), it seems relevant to this discussion that most things we talk about that are not part of very simple, direct experiences are done so metaphorically, and even much of direct experience is still talked about metaphorically. For example, English and many languages have only metaphors for talking about time such that there are few to no ways to talk about time as itself rather than as a metaphor for something else (distance, size, finite resource, etc.), yet time would seem to be something we have direct experience with.
If everything is metaphors, then it seems likely that we should expect to be able to switch metaphors and thus equivocate by changing what a word means by changing the metaphors that support it.