Carlos Cornejo, Conceptualizing Metaphors Versus Embodying the Language

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Abstract The paper presents a review of Kövecses’s bookMetaphor in Culture: Universality and Variation (2005) advancing a

more general critique to the cognitive linguistic view of metaphor.Kövecses addresses a pending problem for the cognitive linguistic

approach, namely the observed variation both cross-culturallyand within cultures in the use of metaphors. If, as predicted by

cognitive linguistics, metaphorical expressions are bodilymotivated, conceptual metaphors should be universals. Variationis also a problem for this theory. I argue that the problem reflects

the incapacity of the theory to integrate bodily and socialmeanings. To solve this dilemma, three tenets of cognitive

linguistics should be changed: the necessity to hypothesizeconceptual structures between body and meaning; the framing ofmetaphor as a logical device rather than a psychological process;

and the omission of the phenomenological experience when usingmetaphors. I conclude with a brief sketch of how a metaphor

theory should work when changing those tenets.

Key Words conceptual metaphor, embodiment, meaningconstruction, metaphor, microgenesis

Carlos CornejoPontificia Universidad Católica de Chile

Conceptualizing Metaphors versusEmbodying the Language

Kövecses, Zoltán, Metaphor in Culture: Universality and Variation.Cambridge: Cambridge Universty Press, 2005. ISBN 0–521–84447–9(hbk).

The object of this paper is to review Zoltán Kövecses’s 2005 book,wherein the author tackles the issue of cultural variability in metaphoruse from a cognitive linguistic point of view. According to this theory,linguistic metaphors are expressions of subjacent conceptualmetaphors (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980), which are based on bodily experi-ences (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999). Therefore, the question is a crucial onefor the validity of the theory: if metaphors are bodily grounded, andwe all have the same physical constitution, how can cultural differ-ences in the use of metaphors (documented so far) be explained?Kövecses also faces the problem of understanding cultural variations

Culture & Psychology Copyright © 2007 SAGE Publications(Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore) http://cap.sagepub.com

Vol. 13(4): 474–487 [DOI: 10.1177/1354067X07082806]

Review Essay



Cornejo Conceptualizing Metaphors

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within a theoretical framework which defends the idea that universal(or quasi-universal) conceptual metaphors constitute the structure ofabstract thought. Thus, the goal of the author is to offer a ‘morecomprehensive and sophisticated version of the [cognitive linguistic]theory [of metaphor]’ (p. 5), which would give a coherent explanationof the fact ‘that metaphors vary considerably on all levels of theirexistence—both cross-culturally and within cultures’ (p.34).

Metaphors and Conceptual Metaphors

After the presentation of his goal, Kövecses begins the introductionwith a useful comprised exposition of the standard cognitive linguis-tic view of metaphor (henceforth: CLVM). It is useful to begin thepresentation of the core tenets of the CLVM by indicating its differenceswith the classical analysis of metaphor. Central for traditional studiesof metaphor is the distinction—introduced originally by Richards(1936)—between the tenor (since Black [1962], called ‘topic’) and thevehicle of a metaphor. Tenor or topic is what is described by themetaphor, while vehicle is the term used to describe the topic. So, inthe metaphorical expression ‘Physicians are gods’, ‘physicians’ is thetopic, which is described by means of the vehicle ‘gods’. In the CLVM,topic and vehicle become target and source, respectively. This termino-logical modification obeys Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) claim thatmetaphor should be looked for not in metaphorical linguisticexpressions (such as the example about physicians), but in the concep-tual system of the speaker. In other words, metaphor is conceptual, notjust linguistic. So, the metaphorical expression ‘You make my bloodboil’ is constructed upon a more basic conceptual metaphor, namely:ANGER IS A HOT FLUID IN A CONTAINER (following a long tradition inlexical semantics, cognitive linguists distinguish [simple] words fromconcepts by writing the latter in capitals). At this conceptual level, ametaphor does not consist of a superficial vehicle substituting or inter-acting with a superficial topic. Rather, a metaphor is:

. . . such a set of correspondences that obtains between a source domain anda target domain, where metaphorical linguistic expressions (i.e., linguisticmetaphors) commonly make the conceptual metaphors (i.e., metaphors inthe mind) manifest (although there may be conceptual metaphors that haveno linguistic metaphors to express them). (Kövecses, p. 27)

In this sense, according to the CLVM, most of our abstract concepts aremetaphorical: they are grounded in at least one conceptual metaphor.

Nonetheless, what justifies the election of the terms ‘target’ and‘source’ is not only the localization of the metaphor at a conceptual



level, but also its embodied nature. The CLVM suggests that therelation between both terms of a conceptual metaphor is a constitutiveone: the target concept (ANGER) derives its meaning from the sensori-motor (i.e., bodily) experience contained in the source domain (HOT

FLUID IN A CONTAINER). For this reason, ‘the source is a more physicaland the target a more abstract kind of domain’ (Kövecses, p. 5). Hence,language is embodied (or, more precisely, concepts are embodied). Thisis a crucial point for understand to what extent the CLVM representsa turn from the generativist tradition in linguistics. Conceptualmetaphors have in all cases an experiential basis, be it direct, as in‘primary metaphors’ (such as AFFECTION IS WARMTH or TIME IS MOTION),or indirect, as in ‘complex metaphors’ (such as ANGER IS A HOT FLUID IN

A CONTAINER or SOCIETY IS A FAMILY). From this (direct or indirect) experi-ential basis, concepts and linguistic expressions acquire meaning.Bodily experience allows us to comprehend the very concept ofWARMTH; from this corporal knowledge arises naturally the comprehen-sion of AFFECTION IS WARMTH, considering the fact that, since birth,bodily experiences of affection are correlated with WARMTH rather thanCOLDNESS. Metaphorical expressions like ‘We have a warm relationship’also become easily understandable because there is an activation, at anunconscious level, of the conceptual metaphor AFFECTION IS WARMTH,which in turn goes back to embodied knowledge. AFFECTION is nolonger the topic that, according to classical analysis, was described ina certain metaphorical manner. WARMTH is also not a vehicle throughwhich we describe AFFECTION. WARMTH is a corporally based knowl-edge which feeds AFFECTION. Therefore, in the CLVM, ‘topic’ becomes‘target’ and ‘vehicle’ becomes ‘source’. Another difference with thetraditional metaphor analysis is this: metaphor is in the CLVM a deepconceptual artifact, underlying the manifest metaphorical expression,which is the analysis unit of the traditional metaphor theories.

The Universality Claim and the Problem of Cultural Variation

An obvious corollary of the CLVM description is that conceptualmetaphors should be universal, since we all have the same body, and,therefore, the same experiential basis. But, as Kövecses correctly pointsout, anthropological and linguistic evidence contradicts this universal-istic image of the metaphor performance. The author providesabundant linguistic data from typologically different languages,showing variations in the use of metaphors at all levels, involving allcomponents of the CLVM, not only cross-linguistically, but also within

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the same culture. For example, Kövecses observes that differentcultures vary in the use of source, target and experiential basis. Thesame target (for example: HAPPINESS) can be conceptualized differentlyin many cultures/languages (Chinese: FLOWERS IN THE HEART; English:UP, LIGHT, FLUID IN A CONTAINER); this variation is denominated byKövecses as the ‘range of the target’. Another kind of variation is the‘scope of the source’: the fact that in different cultures/languages thesame source domain (for example: BUILDINGS) can be associated withvery different targets (English: THEORIES, RELATIONSHIPS, SOCIAL GROUPS;Tunisian Arabic: EDUCATING CHILDREN, IMAGINING). In other cases,however, cultures which use the same conceptual metaphors to expresscertain abstract concepts seem to diverge in their conceptualizationpreferences (e.g. in Hungarian LIFE is primordially conceptualized asSTRUGGLE/WAR and as COMPROMISE, while in America, LIFE tends to beconceptualized as PRECIOUS POSSESSION or as GAME). Kövecses exempli-fies that variation is also to be found within the same culture at asubcultural, ethnic, regional and diachronic level. Even at an individ-ual level, one can observe how a person’s life experience is reflected intheir preference for certain metaphorical conceptualizations.

How can order be restored in this chaotic linguistic world? Kövecsestries to conciliate the universalistic vocation of the CLVM with this(now) recognized factual complexity. First of all, the author points outthat some aspects of the CLVM produce metaphor—namely, experien-tial basis, source and target domains, and the conceptual integrationbetween both (‘blending’)—while other aspects—like mappings,entailments and certainly the linguistic and non-linguistic metaphori-cal realizations—are, rather, affected by it. This distinction allows himto delimit the range of variation causes. On the other hand, Kövecsesintroduces several theoretical artifacts to make sense of variabilitywhile maintaining the universality claim. Two of them are particularlyrelevant as they are present throughout his work: (a) the idea of‘meaning foci’; and (b) the consideration of description levels. Theauthor proposes that metaphor variation can occur since conceptualmetaphors have several ‘meaning foci’, that is, certain source domainscontribute conventionally with predetermined conceptual materialwhen applying to specific targets. As it is a conventionalized associ-ation, it follows that it can change cross-culturally, but still, in suchcases, we can assume that the same conceptual metaphor is at play.Regarding the description of levels, Kövecses introduces in differentsegments of his book the idea that many cases of apparent cross-cultural variability are, as a matter of fact, cases of variability at aspecific level. However, when we analyze these cases at a higher level


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of abstraction, we find the very same conceptual metaphor at a super-ordinated level. That means that a single bodily activity can be con-ceptualized with different meaning foci in different cultures; but thebodily experience that constitutes the base of a conceptual metaphordoes not depend on its cultural interpretation. Thus, the body providesan ample experience that tolerates and constrains different possiblecultural interpretations. Therefore, variation exists at a manifest level;and at a latent level, universality remains.

The exposition of the multiple cultural variability evidences culmi-nates in the last chapters, in which Kövecses presents an integratingview of the causes of variability in metaphor use. The author recog-nizes that there are mainly three different sources of variability: differ-ential experience; differential cognitive preferences and styles; andindividual creativity. Under ‘differential experience’ the authorcomprehends differing awareness of physical, social and communi-cative contexts, the differing social and personal histories, as well asdiffering social and personal concerns and interests. The differentialcognitive preferences and styles includes the ‘differential experientialfocus’, that is,

. . . different peoples may be attuned to different aspects of their bodilyfunctioning in relation to a target domain, or . . . they can ignore or downplaycertain aspects of their bodily functioning as regards the metaphoricalconceptualization of a particular target domain. (Kövecses, p. 246)

Other differential cognitive preferences are particular prototypesimplicitly in operation when using a metaphor, and preferences formetaphorical or metonymical constructions. Finally, two universalcognitive processes—namely, metaphor and ‘blending’ or ‘conceptualintegration’ (see Fauconnier & Turner, 2002)—are responsible forvariety in human thought. What varies here, however, is the finalproduct, not the involved processes. ‘The Grim Reaper’ is, for example,the result of a multi-scope blending (with domains such as ‘reaper’,‘killer’, ‘death’, ‘human death’, ‘cause’, etc.), which can only exist in acommunity with inherited Christian values and beliefs.

Body, Society and the Mind In-between

The background problem the book addresses is the relation betweenmind and society, or, more precisely, between mental contents andsocial contents, from a cognitive linguistic point of view. The CLVMcan be considered successful regarding its arguments in favor of themetaphorical nature of many abstract concepts which we use daily and


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which we consider as literal. It is also successful regarding the demon-stration of the embodied nature of these concepts. This theory is,however, not so successful in its capacity to understand the socialnature of human thought. It would seem that the corporal anchoringof human thought becomes an obstacle when addressing the socialdimension of any metaphorical or linguistic phenomenon. An exampleof this is the problem of the evident cultural variations in the use ofmetaphors. Much of the data reported by Kövecses seem to lead in-exorably to the conclusion he arrives at: ‘In metaphors and theirlinguistic expression, the cognitive and the cultural are fused into asingle conceptual complex . . . what we have been calling conceptualmetaphors are just as much cultural as they are cognitive entities (or,more exactly, processes)’ (p. 162). However, this is a major problem fora theory which understands ‘embodiment’ in a narrow sense.Whenever a cultural content does not have a direct relation with bodilyexperiences, it is understood as indirectly associated. Whenever ametaphor exceeds the limits of biology—namely, the majority of ourordinary metaphorical expressions—it is considered as a superficialmetaphorical expression, not a real (i.e., conceptual) metaphor. A goodexample of this point is discussed by Kövecses (p. 251). The Ifalukword ‘song’ (in English: ‘anger’) does not emerge from the metaphorANGER IS A HOT FLUID IN A CONTAINER, but rather entails prosocial andmoral aspects of community life. Here, Kövecses writes: ‘Does thismean that song is an abstract concept not motivated by bodily experi-ence? Yes, it does, because it is not universal bodily experience thatmotivates it. . . . Its motivation derives from the particular social-cultural practice of Ifaluk’ (p. 251). That is, since the moral feelingcannot be directly mapped in the body (as, for example, a PRESSURIZED

CONTAINER), then it must be motivated by socio-cultural experience. Butthis is equivalent to saying that socio-cultural knowledge is not in thebody (or, at least, not in the same way conceptual metaphors are). Inorder to be comprehensible, the moral feeling should also be subsi-dized by a conceptual metaphor, which we have still to discover. Thisconception of embodiment leads unavoidably to the false dichotomyof cognition/culture. As a matter of fact, Kövecses concludes his booksuggesting a model for the cultural variation in the use of metaphorthat basically includes three influence systems: bodily experience;socio-cultural experience; and cognitive preferences and styles. Thus,a metaphor will vary within the constraints imposed by the bodilyexperience, according both to the socio-cultural experience of theperson and to his/her cognitive preferences and styles. This is equiv-alent to saying that we have, on the one hand, corporal knowledge and,


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on the other hand, social knowledge. The ideal of ‘a single conceptualcomplex’ is not satisfied either.

According to an embodied vision of mind, we had expected theconclusion that moral feeling is embodied in an Ifaluk communitymember—when she/he feels ‘anger’—as well as in every human. It ishard, in fact, to think of an Ifaluk feeling his/her ‘song’ (our ‘anger’)and not feeling it in the body, that is, producing in her/him someaction dispositions, gestures, bodily movements, a certain mood oreven evoking certain mental contents. I suppose many cognitivelinguists would not negate such consequences. What they are denyingis its conceptual-metaphorical nature, and therefore its role asbuilding-block of human knowledge. Here we are approaching thecore of the problem. ‘Embodiment’ is for the CLVM not just knowl-edge in the body. In the CLVM, ‘embodiment’ is conceptual knowledgein the body.

Can’t See the Metaphors for the Concepts

The CLVM represents undoubtedly a very important advance in theway to overcome the problems that present cognitive science inheritsfrom its foundational theory: the representational-computational viewof mind (see Cornejo, 2004). Cognitive linguistics was foundedprecisely with the goal to approach what were then (and actually arestill today) the forbidden zones for generativist linguistics. Semanticsbelongs to these zones in the first place. Lakoff arrives at novel waysto approach semantics just after his frustrated attempt to develop agenerative semantics, where a mechanistic semantics was designed tocomplement (and to complete) Chomsky’s syntactic model. In thenovel cognitive linguistics, semantics abandons its secondary positionto become the central point in the analysis. By making this turn, Lakoffand Johnson (1980) describe human thinking as metaphorical,considering that conceptual metaphors are constitutive of our cog-nition (and not only its expressive means). The embodied character ofthese metaphors was in turn the explanatory instrument to bring backthe body to cognitive studies. The CLVM not only brought semanticsback to linguistics, but also brought the body back to mind studies.

Nonetheless, it is not often observed that the emphasis in the concep-tual nature of metaphors has many negative consequences, as observedin the dichotomy of bodily knowledge versus socio-cultural knowl-edge. The CLVM seems overtly disposed to accept the existence ofcorporal knowledge, so far as this is conceptually defined. The theoryapproximates to experiential philosophy and to phenomenology, but


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returns to the eternal world of concepts. Instead of founding cognitionin tacit corporal knowledge, the CLVM ends up founding cognition inthe abstract domain of concepts. What cannot be reported as concep-tual metaphor is not considered likely to receive a bodily based cog-nition. Many social concepts and metaphorical expressions are eitherexcluded or severely reduced. From the rich metaphorical expression‘can’t see the forest for the trees’ remains only the structure TO KNOW IS

TO SEE. The doors to the reign of embodied contents have a geometri-cal form. What are the consequences of this election? Regarding thestudy of metaphor, it means the CLVM will not study metaphorsanymore; it will study conceptual metaphors. Regarding cognitivestudies, it means that the embodied mind theory will be identified withthe search for a new form of universal concepts.

On the Difference between a Word and a WORD

Like any form of lexical-semantic analysis, one may ask about thedifference between a word and a concept. When the CLVM speaks ofconceptual metaphors, it is supposedly telling us something about theconcept of the expression, not (only) about the linguistic meaning ofthe words comprised in the expression. But what is this something elsewhich expresses itself using the words as a carrier? (And that couldstill exist ‘even not having a linguistic metaphor to express it’[Kövecses, p. 27])?!) We are approaching here a metaphysical landscapevery similar to that of the representations for the computational theoryof mind. They are not in the phenomenological mind, because they areunconscious. But they are not in the body as well, because they areconceptually structured. They are in brief the cognitive remnants thatQuine (1951/1964) once called the ‘obscure intermediary entities’:what Aristotle’s essence becomes when divorced from the object ofreference and wedded to the word. Concepts can be useful units ofanalysis for a representational theory of mind, where these units aredeployed in the mental scenario. But it is not very clear where such a-contextual entities are to be found. Surely concepts have an import-ant representational function for philosophical, logical and scientificinquiries. But these do not reside in the mind if conceptual metaphorsare still to be defined as static building-blocks of knowledge. When wepay attention to the human experience (just what the CLVM draws ourattention to), we observe more richness, variability and dynamicitythan objective, unchangeable entities are capable of evidencing. Byexpressing ‘you can’t see the forest for the trees’ we are not saying ‘toknow is to see’. Just as well, we are not saying ‘to know is to see’ when


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we say ‘I see what you mean’, and certainly we do not mean the samewith ‘you can’t see the forest for the trees’ and ‘I see what you mean’.And even if ‘to know is to see’ plays a role in the comprehension of ‘youcan’t see the forest for the trees’, it is only one of the many suggestionswe are showing by the original metaphor. Therefore with ‘you can’t seethe forest for the trees’, we are suggesting a myriad of associations,whose richness consists just of its preverbal, tacit and non-conceptualnature.

It is difficult to see why the supposedly conceptual nature functionsas a prerequisite for cognitive/corporal knowledge to be considered asembodied. Certainly the CLVM has to defend a distinction between thelinguistic meaning of a word and its concept. But where is the frontierbetween the meaning of ‘anger’ and the concept ANGER? If we assumemeanings are subjective while concepts are objective, what kind ofsubject discovers the perennial conceptual structures? And, finally,how can I grasp concepts but with words? The only answer we can findis: ‘Such an approach could lay the foundations for a more ‘formal’ studyof cultures . . . that is, at the same time, sensitive to both the universaland the non-universal experiences of human beings living in thosecultures’ (Kövecses, p. 192, italics added). The apparently static andobjective nature of abstract concepts converts them into good candi-dates for a formal approach to meaning. What is nevertheless oftenforgotten in this kind of reasoning is the fact that concepts are notabstract, but abstracted.

Metaphor as a Microgenetical Meaning Expansion

When we question the very need to search for abstract entities behindmetaphorical expressions, metaphor comprehension comes closer tothe phenomenological experience one has while producing or hearingmetaphorical speech. In a non-conceptual analysis of metaphor, all thenuances and subtleties of ordinary metaphorical expressions, typicallyunobserved in a CLVM analysis, appear in the foreground. Theparticular casuistic of an expression like ‘can’t see the forest for thetrees’ can only be noted when we focus on the meaning construalenacted through this linguistic action. By means of such an approachwe are centering our attention at the microgenetical level (Rosenthal,2004), where a metaphorical expression produces its peculiar expan-sion of meaning. In metaphors, a specific thematic field is expanded insuggested, but tacit, directions.

The need to descend from platonic universals to the groundedmeanings of ordinary metaphorical expressions was already made


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explicit by Heinz Werner in 1919 through his distinction between a‘logical’ and a ‘psychological’ interpretation of metaphor:

We have to distinguish between a purely logical and a psychologicalinterpretation of this concept [metaphor]. In purely logical form, metaphoris understood as a substitution of an expression with another more or lessvivid one. In this case the question about which subjective mental attitudecreates the contrast is completely omissible. In the psychological interpret-ation the situation is different. In this case, it is crucial that the person whocreates the metaphor knows also the fact that here there is no mathemat-ically congruent substitution, but only an incidental, approximate one. Theexperience of incongruence in the equivalence is an essential characteristicof metaphor, when it is psychologically understood. (Werner, 1919, pp. 3–4)

What we discover with Werner’s proposal is that inherited terms suchas substitution, comparison, topic and vehicle derive from a logicalway of analyzing metaphors. This is a very useful one when we wantto get a clear idea of which knowledge is involved by asserting deter-mined metaphors. But this language is not attempting to describe themental processes involved. We all know when we are confronted witha metaphor that cannot be evaluated as an assertion, because we allfeel the experience of incongruence. We know in advance that you arenot seeing forests or trees, that I cannot see your mind, and that thephysicians are not gods. We know from the very start that everymetaphor is false, like all similes are obvious truths (Davidson, 2001).Nevertheless we actively seek coherence in these expressions, becausewe are interested not in what they are saying, but rather in what theyare insinuating.

The experience of incongruence leads us to a search for coherence inorder to make sense of what is flagrantly false. (Incidentally, we cansee in the case of metaphor the operation of a general principle ofhuman cognition: the ubiquitous tendency to search for meaningful-ness in the perceived world, what Hörmann [1976, 1986] called the‘sense constancy’, in explicit analogy to the perceptual constanciesdescribed by the Gestalt school.) What distinguishes radically ametaphor from a purely logical substitution, comparison, or interactionbetween two conceptual or semantic domains is that the former is fromthe start experienced as incongruence without solution. It is a kind ofincongruence which can never be logically resolved, because it simplydoes not have a logical solution. However, its patent falsehood doesnot preclude that we see something through the metaphoricalexpression. But what we see cannot be exhaustively paraphrased. Inthis sense, Davidson (2001) points out that metaphor says nothingspecial in addition to its literal meaning; instead it suggests. Metaphor


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does not provide a definite cognitive content, but it shows many thingswhich cannot be completely linguistically expressed: ‘Joke or dream ormetaphor can, like a picture or a bump on the head, make us appreci-ate some fact—but not by standing for, or expressing, the fact’(Davidson, 2001, p. 262). Metaphor is also a form of language used inorder to suggest contents which can be only imperfectly spoken. Thisinsight is expressed in pragmatics through the distinction between ‘tosay’ and ‘to show’. And the work of metaphor is to show, not to say:‘The metaphor functions in the showing mode . . . [it] is not the vehicleof knowledge, but a window to knowledge’ (Fermandois, 2003, p. 438).

To consider metaphor as a form of language use which consists ofinsinuating (not in saying) is to remember that metaphor also has apsychological interpretation. When considered as a language usephenomenon, metaphor is not a mapping. Mappings suppose staticcartographies to be related. But, psychologically interpreted, metaphoris a contextualized, ongoing process of meaning development that hasreality in the phenomenological experience of a person. It is a processof meaning expansion in directions which are not made explicit, butonly insinuated. From a psychological point of view, this means thatwhat metaphor means is construed just at the (microgenetical) momentwhen the used terms co-occur in the same thematic field. It is the syner-getic effect of the contextualized presentation of two terms that makespersons see what metaphor shows. Shanon (1993) describes themetaphor in this respect as ‘a primary mechanism by which newfeatures are generated. . . . Metaphor juxtaposes words in mannerswhich are novel . . . just as the placement of words with other objectscreates the feature of objects, so the placement of words creates newfeatures of words’ (pp. 89–90).

A consequence of a pragmatic view of metaphor is that it is an in-herently dynamic process of generating new meaning. In the situationof language use, meaning relations are permanently evolving anddependent on many contextual cues. As microgenetically emergingconstruals, metaphors have usually multiple possible interpretations.The direction of the interpretation results from a holistic compre-hension emerging not only from linguistic information but also fromnon-linguistic cues. These latter constitute the context of use anddetermine to a great extent what will be understood with themetaphorical expression. ‘Physicians are gods’ means something verydifferent when asserted by a grateful patient than by an angeredpatient after an unusually long waiting time.

A further consequence of a pragmatic view of metaphor is that theproblem of cultural variation disappears. Different communities will


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probably vary as a natural consequence that metaphors are linguisticactions for certain idiosyncratic purposes. From such a viewpoint,what demands explanation is not variation, but rather universality—and precisely for that goal the CLVM is interesting.

Embodying the Language Instead of Conceptualizing Metaphors

One of the major achievements of the CLVM is the proposal to give anexperiential basement to cognition. Certainly, as authors of thisapproach have through many cases demonstrated, even the mostabstract conceptual constructions can be comprehensible insofar as wecan understand them corporally. I have attempted, however, to showthat the insistence of the CLVM to look for subjacent conceptualmetaphors can easily lead one to ignore the fact that metaphor is a useof language, not a formal mapping. It is parole, not langue. Therefore itis dynamic, permanently evolving and drastically context-dependent.

Problems with the CLVM become more evident when we realize thatthe very notion of embodiment is subordinated to a core of conceptualnature. A linguistic expression will be ‘embodied’ in the CLVM whenit is conceptually represented in the body, that is, when we can recog-nize a conceptual metaphor that motivates it. Thus, ordinarymetaphors (so-called ‘linguistic metaphors’) are not relevant in them-selves, but, rather, only their foundational conceptual metaphors are.The direct consequence of this kind of ‘embodiment’ is that socio-cultural and idiosyncratic metaphorical usages which do not adjust tothe conceptual mold will not have a clear position in the model.Kövecses addresses this big puzzle in the CLVM, recognizing the abyssproduced between the bodily-conceptual, universal knowledgedescribed by the model and socio-cultural, locally situated knowledge.Kövecses attempts to integrate both, but conserving the conceptualhard core of the CLVM.

Instead of seeking universal structures anchored physically in thebody, metaphor research could gain much more by embodying socio-cultural knowledge, which would be in line with a long tradition incognitive studies—such as the ‘indwelling’ of Michael Polanyi (1958)or the ‘affordances’ of James J. Gibson (1979). Integration of social andbiological knowledge entails realizing that every person is a being-in-the-world and that our conceptualizations of the world are the arrivalpoint, not the starting point, of cognition (Shanon, 1993). This being-in-the world is a phenomenological experience and is lived with a pre-reflexive feeling of certainty. The sense experience involves an embodied


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presence. The body is the vehicle of our being-in-the-world, because wedo not have a body, but we are our body (Merleau-Ponty, 1962). To bein the world also means to be bodily in the world. Since this beingbodily in the world involves participating in actions with others,cultural meanings cannot be something extra-somatic. As Tim Ingold(2000) exposes: ‘Sociality is given from the start, prior to the objectifi-cation of experience in cultural categories, in the direct, perceptualinvolvement of fellow participants in a shared environment’ (p. 167).Consequently, it seems more promising to embody the social languagethan to conceptualize the body.

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Biography

CARLOS CORNEJO is Assistant Professor in psychology at the PontificiaUniversidad Católica de Chile. His research interests include theoretical andempirical aspects of meaning construction/processing, figurative languageand pragmatism in psychology. ADDRESS: Escuela de Psicología, P. Universidad Católica de Chile, Vicuña Mackenna 4860, Santiago, Chile.[email: [email protected]].


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Documents

Carlos Cornejo, Conceptualizing Metaphors Versus Embodying the Language