Descriptions of Pain, Metaphor, and Embodied Simulation

Abstract

The variety of sensations conveyed by the English word pain tend to be described via expressions that refer to potential causes of bodily damage (e.g., stabbing, burning). Such expressions are used metaphorically when they convey pain experiences that do not directly result from physical damage (e.g., migraine pain). In this paper, I discuss psycholinguistic and neuroscientific research that suggests that these uses of metaphor may facilitate some form of embodied simulation of pain experiences on the part of listeners/readers, which may in turn provide the basis for an empathic response. I suggest that different kinds of metaphorical descriptions of pain vary in terms of their potential for eliciting a response involving embodied simulation, and in terms of the nature and intensity of the simulation they may elicit. I argue that the most relevant characteristics of metaphorical descriptions of pain in this respect are their level of detail, degree of creativity, and textual complexity.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author is grateful to David Ritchie, Paul Chilton, and Raymond Gibbs for comments on an earlier version of this article.

Notes

¹See Damasio (1999, pp. 71-9) for a discussion of the distinction between “pain sensation” and “pain affect”.

²The metonymic basis of metaphorical descriptions of non-nociceptive and emotional pain in terms of different causes of physical damage can be accounted for by Grady's (1997) theory of “primary metaphors” (see also Lakoff & Johnson, 1999; Lakoff, 2008). In Grady's terms, the experiential correlation between simple causes of physical damage (e.g., a blade, a flame) and nociceptive pain gives rise to a primary metaphor that can be labelled “PAIN IS CAUSE OF PHYSICAL DAMAGE”. This primary metaphor may in turn provide the basis for more complex metaphors for pain involving source domains such as “TORTURE”.

³The log likelihood ratio is a widely used method for calculating statistical significance in corpus linguistics, as it does not assume normal distribution (see Dunning, 1993). The log likelihood value of the collocations mentioned below is above 15.13, which corresponds to p < 0.0001.

⁴The use of the term “simulation” should not therefore be taken to suggest an exact match between the internal states of self and other, whether in terms of the nature or the intensity of these internal states. Indeed, Gallese (2009, p. 231) acknowledges that the “mirror” metaphor in “mirror neuron” research “is perhaps misleading.”

⁵Following Steen, 1994, p. 44, I use the terms “metaphor processing,” “metaphor comprehension,” or “processing of metaphorical expressions” to refer to “any psychological process relating to linguistic metaphors.”

⁶For example, it has been suggested that mirroring mechanisms involving the motor areas of the brain are involved in the processing of metaphorical expressions such as “grasping a concept” (e.g., Lakoff, 2008; Gallese & Lakoff, 2005), but the experimental evidence is inconclusive (see Aziz-Zadeh et al., 2006).

⁷This is consistent with Ritchie's latest thinking (personal communication).

⁸In terms of the metaphor identification procedure proposed in Pragglejaz Group (2007), the expressions that are part of similes are used in their basic meanings, and are therefore not used metaphorically (see also Semino, 2008, pp. 16-17). The metaphoricity of some similes lies in the comparison between the basic meanings of these expressions and the aspects of the topic or target domain that the simile is used to describe.

⁹The imaginative production and interpretation of scenarios such as that evoked by Frances Tenbeth is also likely to rely on previous responses to descriptions and images of torture and injury in fiction and the media, which make such experiences familiar even to people who have no first-hand knowledge of them (I am grateful to David Ritchie for this observation).