Marlene Johansson Falk
Metaphor theories have traditionally focused on the level of language, or on the level of thought. However, more recently it is commonly argued that multiple interacting constraints shape metaphorical meaning (Gibbs Jr & Santa Cruz, 2012; Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez & Pérez Hérnandez, 2011). Accordingly, my psychological and corpus linguistic surveys suggest that linguistic metaphors are neither merely lexical, nor merely a reflection of more schematic metaphorical mappings between cognitive domains, but conceptual mappings that involve speakers’ embodied experiences of the specific concepts represented by the lexical items that they use. They are “lexico-encyclopedic conceptual (LEC) metaphors” (Johansson Falck, 2018, 2022) from which we may gain insights into how speakers’ embodied understandings of the world around them, through affordances (Gibson, 2015), help them structure, re-experience, and metaphorical mappings at more schematic levels of abstraction (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980/2008, 1999). In this presentation, I introduce the notion of LEC metaphors along with a method for identifying metaphors at this level of abstraction (Johansson Falck & Okonski, 2022, accepted).
References
Gibbs Jr, R. W., & Santa Cruz, M. J. (2012). Temporal unfolding of conceptual metaphoric experience. Metaphor and symbol, 27(4), 299-311.
Gibson, J. J. (2015). The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception: Classic Edition. Psychology Press.
Johansson Falck, M. (2018). From ecological cognition to language: When and why do speakers use words metaphorically? Metaphor and Symbol, 33(2), 61-84.
Johansson Falck, M. (2022). Lexico-encyclopedic conceptual (LEC) metaphors. In T. L. Fuyin (Ed.), Handbook of Cognitive Semantics. Brill.
Johansson Falck, M., & Okonski, L. (2022). Procedure for Identifying Metaphorical Scenes (PIMS): A Cognitive Linguistics Approach to Bridge Theory and Practice. Cognitive Semantics, 8, 294-322. https://doi.org/10.1163/23526416-bja10031
Johansson Falck, M., & Okonski, L. (accepted). Procedure for identifying metaphorical scenes (PIMS): The case of spatial and abstract relations. Metaphor & Symbol.
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980/2008). Metaphors We Live By. Univeristy of Chicago Press.
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1999). Philosophy in the flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to western thought. Basic books.
Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez, F. J., & Pérez Hérnandez, L. (2011). The contemporary theory of metaphor: Myths, developments and challenges. Metaphor and Symbol, 26(3), 161-185.