Publications
Publication details [#3348]
Casasanto, Daniel and Sandra Lozano. 2008. The cognitive function of metaphorical gestures. In Cienki, Alan and Cornelia Müller. Metaphor and Gesture. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. pp. 17–27. 11 pp. URL
Publication type
Article in book
Publication language
English
Keywords
Place, Publisher
Amsterdam: John Benjamins
Abstract
We report data on gestures for a number of metaphorized concepts, including temperature. In these experiments, English speaking participants gestured consistently with the spatial schemas implied by the stories they told, both when they used metaphorical spatial language (e.g., upward gesture during 'the temperature WENT UP') and when they expressed the same ideas using non-spatial language ( e.g., upward gesture during 'the temperature GOT HOTTER'). Further experiments showed that preventing or interfering with these metaphorical gestures caused dramatic increases in the rate of verbal disfluency during storytelling
(Daniel Casasanto)