Levels of Metaphor

August 8th, 2006 Fred McVittie Posted in Abstract, Embodiment, Gesture, Mathematics, Metaphor, Poetics |

Although all abstract concepts are rendered comprehensible through the use of embodied metaphor, there is no clear division between the concrete and the abstract. It is more useful to consider metaphor operating at various levels of remove.

• Functional and operational actions performed by the body are clearly not metaphorical and are the most ‘concrete’
• Gestures and words which ’stand in’ for these concrete actions are similarly concrete, although there may be an element of metonymy in their isolation of a particular element of a concrete action.
• Words for concepts or entities which have no physically experienced properties can only be rendered linguistically by using reference to concrete actions/objects, i.e. metaphor.
• Non-natural languages can be developed to discuss certain abstract concepts based on the systematisation of concrete embodied metaphors, e.g. Mathematics, poetry.