X IS A JOURNEY: Embodied Simulation in Metaphor Interpretation

Abstract

This essay compares simulation-based accounts of metaphor processing recently proposed by Gibbs (2006a) and Ritchie (2006), using examples of metaphors based on the metaphor vehicle “journey” from four different texts. From analysis of these different examples, it is concluded that simulation may come into play at different levels, depending on the metaphor and the context in which it is used. Further, it is suggested that the imaginative simulation of the object or action named by a metaphor vehicle, proposed by Gibbs, incorporates a partial subset of detail-level perceptual simulators. This leads to the proposal that the two models describe cognitive processes that operate at different levels or stages in the metaphor interpretation process, and that they might usefully be merged into a single more comprehensive model of embodied metaphor interpretation. The more comprehensive model provides a richer theoretical context for understanding how reuse and modification of a particular metaphor (Cameron, 2007) as well as the use of apparently different metaphors that activate similar simulations can influence comprehension, and how skilled orators can use these effects to accomplish complex communicative objectives (e.g., Blair, 2005; Obst, 2003).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author is indebted to Ray Gibbs, Jr., Molly Major, and two anonymous reviewers for many useful insights and suggestions; any remaining errors and omissions are of course my own responsibility.

Notes

¹Lakoff & Johnson have been criticized by several theorists, beginning with Vervaeke and Kennedy (1996) for their apparently arbitrary claim that this and other metaphorical phrases are necessarily based on a single “root” metaphor (see also Haser, 2005; Ritchie, 2003; 2006; Semino, 2008). Indeed, for many metaphors, it appears that different people may access quite different underlying conceptual metaphors, with no apparent detriment to their mutual understanding (Ritchie, 2006; Ritchie and Dyhouse, 2008). As I will argue later in this essay, the simulators approach renders the question of which is the “correct” underlying conceptual metaphor much less relevant.