The cognitive psychological reality of image schemas and their transformations

Abstract

One of the important theoretical ideas in cognitive semantics is t hat imageSchemas and their transformations provide pari of the foundation for ihought, reasoning, and Imagination. Image Schemas are different patterns of recurring bodily experiences that emerge throughout sensorimotor activity andfrom our perceptual understanding ofactions andevents in the world. Our aim in this paper is to discuss some of the empirical evidence from psycholinguistics, cognitive psychology, and developmental psychology that is consistent with the idea that image Schemas and their transformations play important roles in human cognition. This experimental research was not conducted and has not generally been considered in terms ofthe cognitive linguistic ideas on image Schemas. However, a large body of research can be interpreted äs supporting the claim that image Schemas are indeed psychologically real andfunction in many aspects of how people process linguistic and nonlinguistic Information. Our review suggests possible ways of integrating this research with thefindings on linguistic structure and meaning in cognitive semantics.One of the important Claims of cognitive semantics is that much of our knowledge is not static, propositional and sentential, but is grounded in and structured by various patterns of our perceptual interactions, bodily actions, and manipulations of objects (Johnson 1987(Johnson , 1993Lakoff 1987 Lakoff , 1990 Talmy 1988). These patterns are experiential gestalts, called image Schemas, that emerge throughout sensorimotor activity äs we manipulate objects, Orient ourselves spatially and temporally, and direct our perceptual focus for various purposes (Johnson 1991).Studies in cognitive linguistics suggest that over two dozen different image Schemas and several image Schema transformations appear regularly in people's everyday thinking, reasoning, and Imagination (Johnson

Complementary perspectives on metaphor: Cognitive linguistics and relevance theory

“…To take another example, children may first have an undifferentiated understanding of seeing something and knowing it, yet over time deconflate these two domains, which nonetheless remain linked as a strong correlation in experience that underlies the primary metaphor KNOWING IS SEEING. Gibbs (1994Gibbs ( , 2006a, Gibbs and Colston (1995) describes evidence from experimental and developmental psychology that is consistent with the idea that (a) very young children possess a rudimentary ability to draw cross-domain mappings, (b) that young children's emerging imageschemas underlie many aspects of concept acquisition, and (c) that children learn the meanings of conventional metaphorical phrases faster when these are motivated by widely known conceptual metaphors than when such phrases are not related to metaphorical schemes of thought. More recent studies show that children generally learn the meanings of metaphorical expressions that are tied to primary metaphors earlier than they do expressions that are based on novel metaphorical mappings (Siqueira, 2005).…”

“…As a linguist (Tendahl) and psychologist (Gibbs), we have found these alternative perspectives to be extremely useful in thinking about mind and language, most broadly, and in trying to understand the complexities of metaphoric language and thought. One of us has published many articles and books that provide empirical support for specific claims of both relevance theory (Gibbs, 1986Gibbs and Moise, 1997;Gibbs and Tendahl, 2006;Hamblin and Gibbs, 2003) and cognitive linguistics (Gibbs, 1992(Gibbs, , 1994(Gibbs, , 2006aGibbs and Colston, 1995;Gibbs et al, 2004). For these reasons, we are in a good position to fairly describe and criticize these different, yet complementary, positions on metaphor.…”

The Perlocutionary Act of Advertising Slogans

“…Effective headlines may well catch a reader"s attention, drawing him or her into the ad and framing his or her interpretation of subsequent ad information. It has been acknowledged that metaphor is not merely a linguistic, rhetorical figure, but constitutes a fundamental part of people"s ordinary thought, reason, and imagination [13] [3] [14].…”

Cognition in HCI: An Ongoing Story

“…In language, image schemas are found to motivate grammatical forms, underlie the meaning of prepositions, motivate verbs and adverbs, and motivate many metaphorical extensions of abstract concepts like causation, death, and morality (Baldauf, 1997;Gibbs & Colston, 1995;Hampe & Grady, 2005;Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, 1999. The question is whether they are also valid outside a purely linguistic context.…”