Motion Metaphors in Music Criticism

The book explores (1) the motivation of motion expressions in Western classical music criticism in terms of conceptual metaphors (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, 1999) in two corpus studies, and (2) their perceived degree of metaphoricity among musicians and non-musicians in a rating study. The results show that while fundamental embodied conceptual metaphors like TIME IS MOTION certainly play a part in explaining why we speak of Western classical music as motion, it is the specific communicative setting of music criticism that determines the particular use of motion metaphors.
Furthermore, the perceived metaphoricity of musical motion metaphors varies with participants’ musical background: musicians perceive musical motion expressions as more literal compared to non-musicians, showing that there are individual differences in the perception of metaphoricity.