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In:Motivation in Language: A cognitive perspective
Edited by Grzegorz Drożdż and Barbara Taraszka-Drożdż
[Human Cognitive Processing 83] 2027
► pp. 63–81

Chapter 3
The many wonderful motivations for metaphor

 | Independent Cognitive Scientist
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
Abstract
This chapter details the many wonderful motivations for metaphor. I describe several constraints on why metaphor arises in specific forms in various communicative forums, many of which are rooted in nonlinguistic experience (e.g. embodied sensations, the desire to make sense of interruptions in our pursuit of various life goals). But these nonlinguistic motivations for metaphor are typically tied to people’s particular communicative needs (e.g. the desire to demonstrate, and not just describe, people’s thoughts). My argument is that there are multiple, interacting, motivations for the emergence of metaphor, in specific linguistic forms, all of which need to be explicitly acknowledged in a comprehensive theory of metaphorical thought, language, and experience.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Intuitions often do not reveal all that motivates human action
  • 3.Embodied experiences
  • 4.Culture and the natural world
  • 5.Situational context
  • 6.The human need for metaphor
  • 7.Metaphors as demonstrations of meaning
  • 8.Conclusions
  • Note
  • References
References (43)
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