Cognitive collages and other mental representations of address forms and strategies

Little attention has been given to the cognitive mechanisms underlying speaker assessments and address form selection. The examination of cognitive strategies leads to a discussion of the conceptual metaphors Portuguese speakers have used in discussing address over the past 25 years. The metaphors fall into three categories: (1) metaphors which are unambiguously spatial, representing the relative position of speaker and hearer; (2) metaphors which are non-spatial in a physical sense yet represent relational distance; and (3) metaphors which relate to the ongoing negotiation of social relationships. Although metaphors in this third category are even further away from the core idea of spatiality, the author argues that the negotiation process itself is a symbolically spatial process.