Publications

Publication details [#5025]

Gibbs, Raymond W., Jr. and Teenie Matlock. 2008. Metaphor, imagination, and simulation: Psycholinguistic evidence. In Gibbs, Raymond W., Jr. The Cambridge Handbook of Metaphor and Thought. Cambridge , UK: Cambridge University Press . pp. 161–176. 16 pp.
Publication type
Article in book  
Publication language
English
Place, Publisher
Cambridge , UK: Cambridge University Press

Abstract

Gibbs and Matlock's chapter argues that part of our ability to make sense of metaphorical language, both individual utterances and extended narratives, resides in the automatic construction of a simulation, whereby we imagine performing the bodily actions referred to in the language ("Metaphor, Imagination, and Simulation: Psycholinguistic Evidence"). They describe empirical evidence from cognitive science showing the importance of embodied simulations in different cognitive activities and discuss very recent findings from psycholinguistics on metaphoric language interpretation that is consistent with the idea that our bodily imaginations are actively recruited in metaphor use. This process of building a simulation, one that is fundamentally embodied in being constrained by past and present bodily experiences, has specific consequences for how verbal metaphors are understood and how cognitive scientists, more generally, characterize the nature of metaphorical language and thought. (Raymond Gibbs)