Metaphors in the Mind
"Abstract concepts are often embodied through metaphor. For example, we talk about moving through time in metaphorical terms, as if we were moving through space, allowing us to 'look back' on past events. Much of the work on embodied metaphor to date has assumed a single set of universal, shared bodily experiences that motivate our understanding of abstract concepts. This book explores sources of variation in people's experiences of embodied metaphor, including, for example, the shape and size of one's body, one's age, gender, state of mind, physical or linguistic impairments, personality, ideology, political stance, religious beliefs, and linguistic background. It focuses on the ways in which people's experiences of metaphor fluctuate over time within a single communicative event or across a lifetime. Combining theoretical argument with findings from new studies, Littlemore analyses sources of variation in embodied metaphor and provides a deeper understanding of the nature of embodied metaphor itself"-- "I would like to begin this book on a personal note. When I was eighteen years old, my father died. I was ill-equipped to deal with the emotional fallout that ensued. My over-riding memory of the time involves the sound of bagpipes. Not the sound of real bagpipes, but of bagpipes in my mind. I lived my life with the constant drone of bagpipes in the background. This became both the bass line and the baseline of my every day experience. On bad days the tunes would start to play, and they would get louder and louder until they became unbearable and I would have to cover my ears. I have never been a fan of the bagpipes, metaphorical or otherwise. As this example shows, in addition to being something that we encounter, metaphor can also be something that we experience on a physical and emotional level whether we like it or not. In other words, metaphor can be 'embodied'"--
