A Lakoff and Johnson term, referring to the structure of some thing, typically an experience. In OO terms, it would be property or member variable of a class.
Consider the experience of a war. The following dimensions apply (pp. 80-81):
* Participants
* Parts (such as Attack, Defense, Retreat, Stalemate)
* Stages (notable events that happen in a time order)
* Responses by one participant to actions by another (counterattack after attack, for example)
* Acts that cause effects (an attack may lead to a counterattack, defender retreats, attacker retreats, etc.)
* Purpose
Notice that a conversation can easily be seen as having the same dimensions. Thus the Argument is War metaphor is natural.
> Understanding a conversation as being an argument involves being able to superimpose the multidimensional structure of part of the concept War upon the corresponding structure Conversation. Such multidimensional structures characterize *experiential gestalts*, which are ways of organizing experiences into structured wholes. In the Argument Is War metaphor, the gestalt for Conversation is structured further by means of correspondences with selected elements of the gestalt for War. Thus one activity, talking, is understood in terms of another, physical fighting. Structuring our experience in terms of such multidimensional gestalts is what makes our experience *coherent*. We experience a conversation as an argument when the War gestalt fits our perceptions and actions in the conversation. (p. 81)