Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) and Embodied Cognition (EC) in Mark Johnson

Within the field of Cognitive Linguistics, two related theories have emerged which provide significant insight into human cognition, understanding, and language. Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) proponents believe that “metaphor is not a poetic device that can be reduced to literal expressions, nor is it a linguistic phenomenon that underscores the disconnect of language and reality; rather, metaphor is a central aspect of human cognition.”[1] Humans can metaphorically extend their understanding of one well understood context into another less well understood context, so that their intuition about a known domain is able to be extended into a novel domain. It is important to note that for CMT, this process of metaphorical extension is sub-verbal. Cognition involves the use of neurologically encoded patterns of meaning called image schemata.[2] These image schemata represent relations, categories of objects or experiences, and other aspects of reality that are meaningful, for example: A cup exists for a person as a CONTAINER. So too, a car has aspects of a container, so when a person thinks about a car, they can do so as a container, assigning meaning to that concept of CAR. CMT theorists use the syntax TARGET IS SOURCE to represent the metaphorical extension of a target domain (car) from the source domain (CONTAINER).

But what is the ‘base’ or ‘foundation’ of this network of metaphorically interrelated ideas? Where are our most well understood contexts formed? Another area within Cognitive Linguistic research, usually referred to as Embodied Cognition (EC), suggests that the most ‘basic’ image schemas become meaningful to us from a very young age as we interact bodily with our environment.

Human understanding involves the parallel development of primarily sub-verbal and mostly spatial image schemata which are then metaphorically extended into “higher and higher” levels of abstraction. Meaning is an emergent experience of human beings where schemata correspond in such a way that the environment as represented by the mind is made ‘rich’ with affordances and meaning. Then, when bodily senses steer the ‘conscious’ part of us to make certain decisions, we navigate our environment according to the vast network of (mostly sub-verbal) understanding we have of our environment and what affordances different parts of the environment grant us in meeting our needs. This conscious-level sense of wanting a particular outcome is the emergence of what is usually referred to as the desire or the will.

The insights of CMT and EC extend into the field of communication.  CMT and EC originated through the study of linguistics (and fit within the category of Cognitive Linguistics).  Language involves (in both hearing and speech) the association of phonetic patterns with these schemata (along with other sensory meaning, for example: hand waving, gesturing, etc.). This phonetic association consists of the neurological development of connections (relationships) between the complex network of image schemata representing the environment, sound patterns, and the other unconscious sensory information which is present in the neural domain. The mirror neuron circuitry of the mind is used extensively to imitate and empathetically imagine the experiences of others and to associate those meanings (as constituted by the image schemata of the other person and as communicated through words) with the sounds and words as they are heard and understood. Image schemata undergird a person’s understanding of their environment, and then in normal social life and conversation, people speak in ways that correspond with the image schemata. Thus, the ‘event’ of acquiring language can be understood to be when verbal input is comprehensible. This is because a comprehensible input event is the experience of a listener perceiving the words being spoken as being ‘synonymous’ or ‘equisemantic’ to the meaning intended by the speaker (composed of and represented by image schemata in both the speaker and the listener).

To share one’s understanding of the meaning of a situation can be understood to be a process of later stringing together these phonetic patterns to ‘send’ the underlying schemata across to the other person (this consolidation occurs unconsciously, and words and phrases arrive at the tongue with relative fluency, or not as the case may be). All of this process is, by requirement, invisible to the speaker and listener. These neurological systems make themselves invisible so that the speaker and listener can simply share their concepts with one another. They each develop affordances that allow them to interact with their environments.

Communication in this model does not need to be limited to the use of words. In CMT and EC, meaning can be communicated effectively and robustly by gestures (especially with the EXTENT schema), facial expressions (GOOD, BAD, DISGUST, CONFUSION, κτλ.), with changes in breathing or tone, or even with a well-placed exclamation point! All of these means of communication rely on image schematic-_non_verbal connections, as opposed to the use of phonetic or verbal associations.

These communicative acts (sometimes subconscious) are then ‘picked up’ (sometimes subconsciously) by others and, through the employment of mirror neuron activity, interpreted and decoded (incredibly rapidly and subconsciously) into a coherent interpretation of the speaker’s ‘mind’ or ideas in the conscious frame of the listener. What is occurring in the listener is an excitement of image schemata that convey a particular experience of understanding (or an experience of lack of understanding, as the case may be).[3]

[1] Frederick S. Tappenden, Resurrection in Paul: Cognition, Metaphor, and Transformation, Early Christianity and Its Literature Number 19 (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2016), 11. See also Tappenden’s discussion on the issue with ‘objectivist’ vs. ‘subjectivist’ accounts of knowledge on page 5, where he describes the one as “producing fantasies of epistemological objectivity” and the other as “presuming an impotent connection between cognition and biological embeddedness.”

[2] Johnson, The Body in the Mind, 18–40.

[3] Understanding another normally requires the mostly unconscious imaginative mirroring induced by the shared phonetic-to-image-schematic neural circuitry. Much of this circuitry is not present when a foreign language is being spoken, or when the image schematic metaphor extensions are overwhelmingly foreign to the listener, or some combination of both of these factors (or others, not here considered). For example, when a very complicated topic is being discussed in a language which is foreign to the listener.