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Article published In:
Visual Metaphors
Edited by Réka Benczes and Veronika Szelid
[Cognitive Linguistic Studies 7:1] 2020
► pp. 13–30
Theories of visual and linguistic metaphor

Visual metaphor in extended conceptual metaphor theory

| Eötvös Loránd University
My goal in the paper is to examine a variety of visual experiences that appear to evoke visual metaphors. This is a range of experience types that extends from “sign-like” visual experiences to “non-sign-like” visual experiences. I propose that visual metaphors are evoked by paintings through winner’s podiums all the way to cityscapes and scenes in nature. The latter two (non-sign-like) cases, cityscapes and natural scenes, are not commonly subjected to serious examination from a CMT perspective. However, they provide us with new challenges in the study of visual metaphors, since they greatly extend the range of visual experience that might give rise to visual metaphors. I suggest, further, that the comprehension or interpretation of all of these visual experiences, including sign-like and non-sign-like alike, makes use of the same metaphorical processing mechanisms. The visual metaphors that are evoked by visual experiences can be based either on correlations or resemblance.
Keywords: visual metaphor, visual experience types, correlation metaphors, resemblance metaphors, conceptual metaphor
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Two kinds of visual metaphors
    • 2.1Correlation-based visual metaphors in the real world
    • 2.2Resemblance-based visual metaphors in the real world
  • 3.How some new extensions of CMT apply to visual metaphors
    • 3.1Extended CMT and the analysis of a painting
      • 3.1.1Complex abstract system
      • 3.1.2Abstract movement
  • 4.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 19 August 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cogls.00047.kov
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Boubakri, Awatef
2023. Visual art, discourse, and Cognitive Linguistics. Cognitive Linguistic Studies 10:1 ► pp. 227 ff. DOI logo
Mo, Yongyi, Rong Zhou & Xi Chen
2022. The effect of incongruous contextual cues on pictorial metaphor processing. Frontiers in Psychology 13 DOI logo

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