Metaphor: From Language to Body, and Back

Abstract

The main question I wish to address in this chapter is this: Why is it that many people who are familiar with the view of metaphor that originates from Lakoff and Johnson's Metaphors We Live By so often expect that metaphors in the cognitive linguistic view should be largely or mostly universal? And, related to this, why is it that people so often criticize this view for ignoring the apparent diversity of metaphors across and even within cultures? Eve Sweetser (in press) nicely captures this general attitude: Almost every time I discuss bodily bases for human conceptual structures, metaphorical or otherwise, there is someone around who sensibly asks me how I could really believe such a story, given the amazing cross-cultural variety of such metaphorical models. How can I think, in the face of all this evidence, that the human body programs us inevitably to some single shared set of models of the world? (Sweetser, in press: 21) To begin to see the most important reasons for this attitude, we have to survey some of the major ideas and recent developments of the cognitive linguistic theory of metaphor. However, a fuller answer to the questions raised here will only emerge in chapter 10, when I discuss the causes that lead to cross-cultural diversity in metaphorical conceptualization. METAPHOR IN THE BODY What does it mean more precisely that metaphor is in the body? In order to see this, imagine the following simple situation: You are working hard, let us say sawing or chopping wood, or you are doing some vigorous exercise, such as running or aerobics. After a while you are beginning to work up heat, you feel hot, and maybe you begin to sweat.