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Added by: Veronica CibotaruAbstract:
The most sustained and innovative recent work on metaphor has occurred in cognitive science and psychology. Psycholinguistic investigation suggests that novel, poetic metaphors are processed differently than literal speech, while relatively conventionalized and contextually salient metaphors are processed more like literal speech. This conflicts with the view of “cognitive linguists” like George Lakoff that all or nearly all thought is essentially metaphorical. There are currently four main cognitive models of metaphor comprehension: juxtaposition, category-transfer, feature-matching, and structural alignment. Structural alignment deals best with the widest range of examples; but it still fails to account for the complexity and richness of fairly novel, poetic metaphors.
Comment: This article offers students an insightful overview of contemporary developments in cognitive models of metaphor, going beyond their initial formulation in Lakoff and Johnson. Cognitive models of metaphor constitute an innovative approach to theories of concepts and the philosophy of mind.
Camp, Elisabeth. Metaphor in the Mind: The Cognition of Metaphor
2006, Philosophy Compass, 1(2), pp.154–170. doi:10.1111/j.1747-9991.2006.00013.x.
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