Accounting is famously “the language of business”. But linguist George Lakoff sees it as the language of morality as well.
Keeping the Moral Books
We all conceptualize well-being as wealth. We understand an increase in well-being as a “gain” and a decrease of well-being as a “loss” or a “cost.” This is combined with a very general metaphor for causal action in which causation is seen as giving an effect to an affected party (as in “The noise gave me a headache”). When two people interact causally with each other, they are commonly conceptualized as engaging in a transaction, each transferring an effect to the other.
An effect that helps is conceptualized as a gain; one that harms, as a loss. Thus moral action is conceptualized in terms of financial transaction. Just as literal bookkeeping is vital to economic functioning, so moral bookkeeping is vital to social functioning. And just as it is important that the financial books be balanced, so it is important that the moral books be balanced.
Of course, the “source domain” of the metaphor, the domain of financial transaction, itself has a morality: It is moral to pay your debts and immoral not to. When moral action is understood metaphorically in terms of financial transaction, financial morality is carried over to morality in general: There is a moral imperative not only to pay one’s financial debts, but also one’s moral debts.
You would think Lakoff’s observations would generate some interest among accountants, but I guess not–I searched Google Scholar for papers citing Lakoff’s Metaphor, Morality and Politics and found none in accounting journals! But it’s definitely worth thinking about, and I’d like to make a few points.