The Cross-modal Representation of Metaphors

The Cross-modal Representation of Metaphors Yu-tung Chang Kawai Chui Department of English Department of English National Chengchi University National Chengchi University ytchang@nccu.edu.tw kawai@nccu.edu.tw Abstract This study investigates the habitual expressions of metaphors in language and gesture and the collaboration of these two modalities in conveying metaphors. This study examined 247 metaphoric expressions in Mandarin conversations. The data includes 110 (44.5%) metaphors being conveyed concurrently by speech and gesture as well as 137 (55.5%) metaphors being conveyed in gesture exclusively. Results show that Entity metaphor is the most frequent one expressed in daily conversations. The cooperation of language and gesture enables us to evaluate the various hypotheses of speech-gesture production. Results from this study tend to support the Interface Hypothesis, which suggests that gestures are generated from an interface representation between speaking and spatio- motoric thought. 1 Introduction The thought that metaphor is not restricted to the realm of literature has been widely accepted since Lakoff and Johnson’s study of conceptual metaphor in 1980. In Lakoff and Johnson’s framework, the word metaphor refers to the “metaphorical concept” in thought and is presented in a form with small capital letters, for example, LOVE IS A JOURNEY (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980: 6). Metaphor can be conceived as a conceptual mapping from one domain to another domain (Lakoff, 1993). The Conceptual Metaphor Theory maintains four significant views about metaphors: metaphor is in thoughts; metaphor is based on the correlations or the structural similarity between two domains; metaphor helps to structure our ordinary conceptual system; and metaphor can be grounded in the body or socio-cultural experiences. According to Lakoff and Johnson (1980), language is an essential modality for us to understand the metaphors. Although we are not usually aware of our conceptual system, we can explore the system by studying language, since communication shares the same system we use in thinking (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). Because metaphors are conceptual, language is not the exclusive realization of metaphors. In the past studies (Cienki, 2008; Cienki & Müller, 2008; Müller, 2008; Gibbs, 2008), gesture is regarded as an independent non-verbal modality where we may find the metaphorical expressions. McNeill (1992: 14) states that metaphoric gestures are “like iconic gestures in that they are pictorial, but the pictorial content presents an abstract idea rather than a concrete object or event...[and] presents an image of the invisible—an image of an abstraction”. A gestural study may also help to enhance the cognitive reality of metaphors. Therefore, the present study collects metaphoric expressions from conversational data, which allow us to see the cross-modal manifestations of metaphors. Previous research on metaphors in language (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980; Lakoff, 1993; Kövecses, 2002) and gesture (McNeill, 1992; Cienki, 2008; Müller, 2008; Chui, 2011, 2013) have offered insightful thoughts and visible evidence about conceptual metaphor, such as the common source- domain and target-domain concepts, the correspondences between two domains, the profiles of metaphors, and the embodiment of metaphors. Nevertheless, most of them only take PACLIC 29 332 29th Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and …

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