Part of
Perception MetaphorsEdited by Laura J. Speed, Carolyn O'Meara, Lila San Roque and Asifa Majid
[Converging Evidence in Language and Communication Research 19] 2019
► pp. 65–84
This chapter offers a perspective on perception metaphor based on the evidence of the recorded language history of English. It draws on the analysis carried out by the “Mapping Metaphor with the Historical Thesaurus” project, which in turn exploits lexicographical evidence representing the English language over a period of more than a millennium. The foundation of the project is the principle that metaphor can be discerned in the lexis shared across semantic fields. The chapter gives an overview of metaphors with either a source or a target in each of the five perception categories and uses examples from the relatively neglected senses, Touch, Taste and Smell, to illustrate the richness and long history of perception metaphors in English.