Publications

Publication details [#66747]

Majid, Asifa, Lila San Roque, Laura J. Speed and Carolyn O'Meara, eds. 2019. Perception Metaphors. (Converging Evidence in Language and Communication Research 19). John Benjamins. vii, 382 pp.
Publication type
Book – edited volume
Publication language
English

Annotation

Metaphor allows us to think and talk about one thing in terms of another, ratcheting up our cognitive and expressive capacity. It gives us concrete terms for abstract phenomena, for example, ideas become things we can grasp or let go of. Perceptual experience—characterised as physical and relatively concrete—should be an ideal source domain in metaphor, and a less likely target. But is this the case across diverse languages? And are some sensory modalities perhaps more concrete than others? This volume presents critical new data on perception metaphors from over 40 languages, including many which are under-studied. Aside from the wealth of data from diverse languages—modern and historical; spoken and signed—a variety of methods (e.g., natural language corpora, experimental) and theoretical approaches are brought together. This collection highlights how perception metaphor can offer both a bedrock of common experience and a source of continuing innovation in human communication.