misunderstanding, a common phenomenon in daily life, may produce slight effects such as unpleasant feelings, or serious effects such as conflicts of people. Linguists, sociologists, and psychologists all try to reveal the causes of misunderstandings, however, none of these studies have explored the causes of misunderstandings from communication process. The paper will use Lakoff's idealized cognitive models to fully describe and systematically analyze the causes of misunderstandings and provide some strategies to reduce misunderstandings.