Money talks because people move: Embodied metaphors in economic action

Abstract

Metaphor plays a major role in the ways people speak and write about money and other economic concepts. One long-standing belief is that most verbal metaphors are clichéd or dead, and do not evoke active metaphoric thinking. However, research in cognitive linguistics and cognitive science demonstrates how verbal metaphors about money are pervasive in discourse, and emerge from vitally alive metaphoric concepts, most of which are rooted in pervasive patterns of embodied experience. An important part of embodied metaphoric language and thought is embodied simulation processes that enable people to talk about abstract concepts, such as money, via imaginative projections of themselves into the actions referred to in language. Studying the language of money and economic action demands examination of the bodily based metaphorical concepts that underlie these types of communication.