The Limits of Containment: Text-as-Container in Composition Studies

We are physical beings, bounded and set off from the rest of the world by the surface of our skins, and we experience the rest of the world as outside us. Each of us is a container, with a bounding surface and an in-out orientation. We project our own in-out orientation onto other physical objects that are bounded by surfaces .... But even when there is no natural physical boundary that can be viewed as defining a container, we impose boundaries-marking off territory so that it has an inside and a bounding surface. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (29)