My question at issue is: “What age do children begin using metaphorical language and what age do they understand metaphorical language?” I also want to answer the question “how do they learn metaphorical language?”
I originally thought of this issue because children's use of metaphorical language was not extensively discussed in the books we read for class. I also had a personal interest in this topic because I have a young child now, and as we studied the metaphor and how integrated it is in everyday life, I wanted to know when she would be comprehending metaphorical language. I think this is an important topic of discussion for this class because most of us are teachers or planning to be a teacher and I thought it might be interesting to see when children became aware of and comprehended metaphorical language. Also because metaphorical language, as we have learned over the period of this course, is the cornerstone of our everyday communication and beyond. It reaches into our comprehension of music, art, literature, cultures, and more. Because we were all children once, this study affects us as well. It helps to explain when our cognitive abilities became adequate enough to comprehend metaphorical language. This, to me, also shows what separates us from the animal kingdom and shows just how truly amazing we are as a species. I honestly wouldn't have known the answer to my question(s) at issue without researching this topic first. My sources were mostly articles written about studies conducted on young children and the results that were concluded from these tests. These sources allowed me insight into varying methods of testing on children and how these results actually ended up stating basically the same thing. The research was interesting to read over and I learned even more about metaphorical language and how it impacts our lives and our communication process even from an early age. From the research that I have done, metaphorical language seems to be used by children as early as ages 3-4. However, most researchers have found that they don't really understand metaphorical language until age 5, which is when they seem to be able to verbalize their comprehension. Obviously, the older the child, the more they are able to comprehend metaphorical language. Research also shows that children are able to understand metaphorical expressions at an earlier age if they are presented in pictorial form instead of verbal form. Interestingly enough, motion metaphors (such as time flies) are the easiest for children to comprehend. Through these case studies, there seems to be two different views that explain how and why children comprehend metaphors. The relational view explains that younger children make metaphorical connections based on feature-based similarities (a button and an eye), but as they age, they begin to use more relational similarities (horses and bicycles are both used for transportation and you can ride them both). The conceptual view explains that younger children focus solely on the source domain, whereas older children can comprehend both the source and target domain. In the end, I think both views are relevant to metaphorical comprehension within children. Also, 4 year-olds need to have a facilitative component (such as a story or pictures) to comprehend metaphors, whereas 5 year-olds seem to be able to understand a simple metaphor all by itself. There is also a possibility that adults misconstrue different interpretations of metaphors that children come up with as misunderstanding, but in all actuality the children have just arrived at a different interpretation rather than a “mainstream metaphor” that is universally or culturally accepted. Parents (or caregivers of a child) are also influential in the understanding of metaphorical expressions and language before and after their child is born. My understanding from the research is that the development of comprehension of metaphoric language derives from the experiences that a child has and the exposure of metaphorical language does impact understanding of metaphors within a child. Also, his/her cognitive abilities stems from the parents. So, the parents are influential by example, genetics, and opportunities that they give their child which in turn creates the capacity for their child to comprehend metaphor. This is why some children are able to understand metaphorical expressions or language earlier than others. Epstein, Ruth L. and Peter J. Gamlin. “Young Children’s Comprehension of Simple and Complex
Metaphors Presented in Pictures and Words.” Metaphor and Symbolic Activity 9.3 (1994): 179- 91. Print. In this article, Epstein and Gamlin conducted a study on a group of 3, 4, and 5 year old children in order to test their ability to comprehend and link metaphors within pictures and words. They explain that the research done on this topic before was inconclusive because the children did not comprehend the concepts or metaphors used in the study. However, when doing their study, Epstein and Gamlin wanted to make sure this did not happen, so they had 23 adults take the test and decided on the metaphors they thought children would understand based on the adults choices. The children were given an object (A) that they had to match up to 2 (B) options. For example, object (A) would be shark's teeth and the children could either match (A) to a saw (B- Explicit Metaphoric Object) or a coat (B- anomalous Object). The test was given both verbally and visually. They also discussed the difference in implicit and explicit metaphoric pairings and divided up the categories of the tests conducted into those two categories. Ultimately, the research conveyed that pictorial connections are easier for younger children to establish than verbal and that the older the child was, the more the fully comprehended metaphorical pairings. Glaznieks, Aivars. “Why focus on target domains? The importance of domain knowledge in children’s understanding of metaphors.” Windows to the Mind: Metaphor, Metonymy and Conceptual Blending. Ed. Sandra Handl and Hans-Jörg Schmid. Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton, 2011. 63-84. Print. In this article, Glaznieks does a study on 5, 8, and 10 year old german-speaking pupils and their ability to match sayings with common emotions (such as fear and anger). His results were typical: the older the pupil, the more metaphorical comprehension they had. For example, from his tests, the 5 year olds correctly matched 25%, the 8 year olds matched 50%, and the 10 year olds matched 75% of the metaphorical expressions to the emotion correctly. Though he did not test this, Glazkieks too argues that the age for metaphorical comprehension is the age of 4. Anything before the age of 4, he claims, is too early for an understanding of metaphorical expression. He states: “From a psychological point of view, children under the age of four lack a crucial cognitive prerequisite: ...theory of mind” (64). He too agrees that children develop their comprehension of metaphorical language through understanding the source domain and then source and target domain together (see Özҫalişkan). Glaznieks also looks back over the other research that has been done in the past on metaphorical comprehension within children. One thing that he says that lays down the foundation for my argument and really impacted my work was that “to understand metaphorical expression, ...a child must have the ability to perceive similarities between two 'things' in the world” (63). This, to me, shows that it mostly depends on the child and their experiences in life and what they have been exposed to affects their ability to make or comprehend metaphorical expressions. Also, this point reinforces the fact that not every child develops mentally in the same way and that is the reason why the age of “metaphorical comprehension” is slightly different from article to article. Özҫalişkan, Şeyda. “Metaphors We Move By: Children’s Developing Understanding of Metaphorical Motion in Typologically Distinct Languages.” Metaphor and Symbol 22.2 (2007): 147-68. Print. In this article, Özҫalişkan studied the impact of motion metaphors in children of ages 4 and 5 in English and Turkish. Though part of the article explained the research done on how languages affect a child's understanding of motion metaphors, I decided just to focus on the outcome of how age impacted the understanding of metaphorical motion. Interestingly, Özҫalişkan believes that children should be able to comprehend motion metaphors easier and at an earlier age than any other type of metaphor. She also determined that the age children can comprehend motion metaphors is 4, but she also proves that as a child's age increases, their understanding of metaphorical motion increases as well. Within the article, two different views of metaphorical comprehension are discussed: relational and conceptual. The relational view explains that younger children make metaphorical connections based on feature-based similarities (a button and an eye), but as they age, they begin to use more relational similarities (horses and bicycles are both used for transportation and you can ride them both). The conceptual view explains that younger children focus solely on the source domain, whereas older children can comprehend both the source and target domain. In the end, I think both views are relevant to metaphorical comprehension within children. Though both the 4 and 5 year-olds were able to understand metaphorical motion, the results of the study did conclude that 4 year-olds had to have a facilitative component (such as a story) to comprehend motion metaphors, whereas 5 year-olds could understand a motion metaphor all by itself. Painter, Claire. “The use of a metaphorical mode of meaning in early language development.” Grammatical Metaphor: Views from Systemic Functional Linguistics. Ed. Anne-Marie Simon- Vandenburgen, Miriam Taverniers, and Louise Ravelli. Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2003. 151-67. Print. Painter uses this article to look at the earliest examples of metaphorical language used by children and also when they comprehend this metaphorical language. She also states that “The child's learning of language through deployment of metaphorical mode is...also a case of learning about language” (152). Within the article, she explains that she studies two brothers, Hal and Stephen for about 3 years. Painter observes Hal from age 7 months to 2 ½ years old and Stephen from age 2 ½ to 5 years old. She discusses the first form of our communication by explaining how we use gestures in our early infancy to create signs with meanings. She explains how this is relevant by stating: “despite the fact that metaphor would seem to depend on the possibility of naming, something not possible till the advent of genuine words, it could be argued that some kind of metaphorical mode of meaning-making is involved earlier than this in the creation of an 'iconic' protolanguage sign, where some behavior that displays intention or affect is transformed into a semiotic gesture” (152-53). This idea is one aspect that sets this article apart from the others. She also looks at the use of grammatical metaphor within these boys and determines that “This examination of the child's use in 'transferred meaning' in both the early and later preschool years suggests strongly that metaphor is indeed a fundamental and powerful mode of meaning for the child” even before they have learned to speak. Torr, Jane and Alyson Simpson. “The emergence of grammatical metaphor: Literacy-oriented expressions in the everyday speech of young children.” Grammatical Metaphor: Views from Systemic Functional Linguistics. Ed. Anne-Marie Simon-Vandenburgen, Miriam Taverniers, and Louise Ravelli. Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2003. 169-83. Print. Torr and Simpson have created this article in order to “explore how certain expressions used by preschool children in their spontaneous interactions with caregivers serve to orient the children towards understandings about literacy” (169). The authors look into linguistic expressions that are used in everyday communication and how they can help develop literary skills. They also explain that in order to be successful in an academic setting, children must develop the ability to organize knowledge which in turn helps with understanding and using metaphorical forms of language/communication. They create a study of children that specifically targets grammatical metaphor usage and understanding. Through this study, Torr and Simpson discover that “there appears to be a link between the use of grammatical metaphor and the negotiation of needs” (171). In the end, they determined that “pre-school children are capable of sophisticated levels of linguistic manipulation and that the interpersonal function is indeed a very important one for the child's development of grammatical metaphor” and that “In terms of ideational grammatical metaphor, no genuinely productive forms of nominalisation were found in the children's language before five years. However, children's use of transcategorized forms increased after the age of three, suggesting a nominalising orientation which may foreshadow subsequent development of genuine ideational metaphors in late primary school” (176). Waggoner, John E., David S. Palermo, and Steven J. Kirsh. “Bouncing Bubbles Can Pop: Contextual Sensitivity in Children’s Metaphor Comprehension.” Metaphor and Symbol 12.4 (1997): 217-29. Print. In this article, Waggoner, Palermo, and Kirsh study metaphorical comprehension within the context of a story. This study involved first graders, third graders, fifth graders, and even college students. The authors argue that though some believe that children do not comprehend metaphor at a young age, they were able to show that children just use contextual clues and deductive reasoning to determine the meaning of a metaphor and that sometimes children arrive at a different answer than adults do. I interpreted this as: children sometimes use metaphoric language that goes against “mainstream metaphors” because they are more imaginative, but as they get older, children are exposed more and more to these mainstream metaphors and adopt that way of metaphorical language. For example, in the study, these children were given sayings to match up to emotions (angry, happy, sad, scared, etc). In two instances of out-of-the-box thinking, one child responded that the saying “Suzie was a bouncing bubble” matched up with being scared because she would be afraid to bounce into something and pop and another child said that the saying “Betty was a colorful rainbow” matched up with being sad because the shape of a rainbow makes a frown and you only frown when you are sad. So basically, this article says that adults and researchers that have studied metaphorical understanding within children misconstrue different interpretations of metaphors as misunderstanding of metaphorical language. In the final chapter (12) of The Meaning of the Body, Johnson finally ties it all together. He states: "I summarize the view of meaning, thought, and language that arises from my exploration of embodied meaning. I also reflect on what the term body means for our nondualistic, naturalistic conception of mind. I end with the idea that philosophy will matter to people only to the extent that it is built on a visceral connection to our world" (208).
Johnson opens this chapter by explaining his ties with philosophy and his feelings on the subject as well as what he meant for us to get from this book: "The central theme of this book is that philosophy becomes relevant to human life only be reconnecting with, and grounding itself in, bodily dimensions of human meaning and value" (263). However, Johnson explains how philosophy has its flaws and does not always work to support meaning. He calls for a new philosophy that "must be a non-dualistic, embodied view of meaning, concepts, mind, thought, language, and values" (264). In "The Meaning of Meaning," Johnson discusses Dewey again and explains that "the meaning of something is a matter of how it connects to what has gone before and what it entails for present or future experiences and actions" (265). Johnson also discusses "The Objectivist Theory of Meaning" and "An Embodied, Experimentalist View of Meaning." Also in the chapter, we reach the section on "The Meaning of 'The Body'," where we discuss the point (and the title) of the book. More specifically, Johnson talks about the literal meaning of our bodies. He writes: "The chief problem with our commonsense notion of the body is that it makes the body out to be a thing. ... Each of us believes, correctly, that he or she is surely more than a lump of pulsating flesh that will someday stop pulsating. Consequently, our commonsense view of the body as an object among other objects in the world leads many people to dismiss the idea that meaning, thought, and mind can be understood as inextricably tied to our bodies" (275). Johnson also talks about how "Meaning and mind are embodied... at the following levels:" (275). 1. the body as biological organism 2. the ecological body 3. the phenomenological body 4. the social body 5. the cultural body Johnson also talks about "The Philosophical Implications of the Embodied Mind" where he explains/re-hashes that: 1. mind and body are not two things 2. human meaning is embodied 3. understanding and reasoning are embodied 4. human beings are metaphorical creatures 5. there is no absolute truth, but there are plenty of human truths 6. human freedom 7. the person are cannot survive the death of your body And finally, Johnson finishes with "The Art of Life" in which everything he says seemed important and I wanted to quote it all, but I will leave you with the last two impacting lines: "The art of our lives is the art of our meaning of the body. In some people, it is beautiful art" (283). What is the biggest thing you will take away from Johnson? What was your favorite chapter? For me, I have to say the chapter on music was the most "meaningful" (pun intended) chapter because of how much music means to me. I will never forget the line where Johnson said: "Music captures us, carries us along on a sensuous, rhythmic tonal adventure, and then deposits us, changed, in a different place from where we started" (237, emphasis mine). When I read that, I knew he felt for music like I did. Music has helped shape my life. In chapter 11 of The Meaning of the Body, Johnson look at "the felt flow of musical meaning and our use of image schemas and metaphors to understand musical motion" (208). He explains: "I pursue Dewey's insight that the arts are a primary means by which we grasp, criticize, and transform meanings" (208).
Johnson opens this chapter by explaining the issues and inadequacies to both sides of the argument over the MUSIC AS LANGUAGE metaphor. He also gives his opinion on the topic and offers a solution: "either abandon the metaphor, or else show that linguistic meaning employs the same semantic resources as music" (236). He also explains that "music is meaningful because it can present the flow of human experience, feeling, and thinking in concrete, embodied forms" and that music "appeals to our felt sense of life" (236). Also, discusses his view on the function of music and uses examples of songs (specifically "Somewhere Over the Rainbow) in order to break down how music is meaningful and what the song is saying. In "The Nature of Musical Meaning," Johnson writes: "The meaning in and of the music is not verbal or linguistic, but rather bodily and felt. ...We cannot convey it verbally, but it is nonetheless meaningful, and it is enacted via our active engagement with the music" (242). Also, Johnson ties music to images. In "The Bodily Grounding of Musical Meaning," Johnson states: "Strong evidence for the embodied nature of musical meaning comes from the fact that virtually all of our conceptualization and description of music uses metaphors whose source domains are drawn from sensorimotor experience" (243). Johnson also discusses "Empirical Evidence for Embodied Musical Meaning," "The Image-Schematic Structure of Musical Meaning," and "The Pluralistic Ontology of Musical Motion." However, Johnson ends the chapter by "highlighting one important insight that comes from an examination of the role of metaphor in our experience and understanding of music --namely, that the mechanisms of human meaning extend far beyond the capacity for language" (260). He states: "The problem here lies not so much in the idea of music as language , but rather in overly narrow and restricted views of linguistic meaning as involving literal concepts and objective reference that is alleged to be completely independent of the nature of our bodies. ...Music is meaningful in specific that some language cannot be, but it shares in the general embodiment of meaning that underlies all forms of symbolic expressions, including gesture, body language, ritual, spoken words, visual communication, etc" (260). I found it really interesting the way he described music within the chapter and how it automatically moves us emotionally and physically. More specifically, he writes: "most of us are simply imaginatively and emotionally drawn into the music, without any theoretical knowledge of what is happening. We are moved by it, and we are moved because music orders our experience using ... processes that we feel in our bodies. ...The experience of sitting quietly in a chair and listening to music is almost unnatural, for our bodies want to move with the music" (236). Do you agree with his argument? Does music move you? Within chapter 10 of The Meaning of the Body, Johnson begins an entirely new section on the relationship between art/aesthetics and meaning. He claims that this new section "turns to art for insight into the nature of meaning" and that he is "simply try[ing] to show some of the ways that arts make use of the very same ordinary, everyday elements and dimensions of meaning operate at the heart of our more prototypical meaning-making in language" (208). He also discusses the "idea that philosophy will matter to people only to the extent that it is built on a visceral connection to our world" (208).
Johnson opens this chapter by stating: "I want to make a brief survey of some of the ways embodied meaning operates in various arts (209). He gives a hypothesis broken down into 2 claims: "(1) aesthetics is not just art theory, but rather should be regarded broadly as the study of how humans make and experience meaning, because (2) the processes of embodied meaning in the arts are the very same ones that make linguistic meaning possible" (209). He talks about the "Devaluation of Aesthetics in the Western Tradition" and the tumultuous relationship between Philosophy and art. Johnson explains that "philosophers ceased to regard art as a way of worldmaking" and that "By the end of the eighteenth century, the status of art had deteriorated from bad to worse" (210). However, Johnson reveals that John Dewey "argued that art is an exemplary form of human meaning-making" and claims that "We need a Dewey for the twenty-first century" (212). For the rest of the chapter, Johnson makes it clear that he himself wants to be the new "Dewey" by reiterating Dewey's arguments, backing up these arguments, and trying to incorporate his own ideas on Dewey's views. He states: "I hope to gesture toward what it would mean to recover Dewey's project for our new century. ...I shall argue, it is the necessity of grounding philosophy in aesthetics -- basing philosophy on an account of the origin and growth of the embodied meaning and value" (213). He also breaks down the issues within Immanuel Kant's Critique of Judgment on aesthetics. Johnson claims that "The source of Kant's problem is a fundamental dualism that runs through his entire philosophical system" (216). Johnson then takes a look at "Meaning Beyond the Words in Poetry and Literature" where he makes an interesting and (I believe) true statement about this topic: "It is true that when we read, we read words. But words have meanings, and meanings go far beyond words. ...Beneath and within what is said is the vast richness of what is meant, and this meaning pulsates with corporeal significance" (219). He looks at specific pieces of poetry and literature and then breaks down his concepts/ideas down further. Also, Johnson discusses "Embodied Visual Meaning" where he shows "how we can grasp the embodied meaning of a visual scene without the use of propositions or language" (225). Johnson explains how different styles of lines bring on a different meaning within the outline and brush strokes of a painting. For example, "Curved lines are gentle, smooth, and flowing. Jagged lines are harsh, agitated, and intense" and those lines bring forth to mind very different emotions (225-26). He calls this "The feeling value of lines." He also lists and discusses: "Pattern perception based on simplicity," "Perceptual sorting by size," "Perceptual sorting by shape and by color," and "Perceptual sorting by spacial contiguity and by orientation." Lastly, while finishing up this chapter, Johnson writes: "The point of this chapter has been to show how the arts are exemplary cases of embodied, immanent meaning" (234). When discussing "Embodied Visual Meaning," Those "emojicons" (or those emotional smiley faces we use in our text/chat messages) came to mind. And his explanation made me think that the purpose of these smiley faces is to convey our feelings behind the words in a text/chat message so others know how we feel about the topic at hand. What example did "Embodied Visual Meaning" make you think of? Within chapter 9 of The Meaning of the Body, Johnson "examine[s] how abstract concepts are defined by conceptual metaphors that recruit the semantics and inference patterns of sensorimotor experience" (176). He also "suggest[s] that metaphor makes it possible to extend body-based meaning and inference into abstract thought" (177).
Johnson opens the discussion of the chapter by saying: "The most sweeping claim of conceptual metaphor theory is that what we call abstract concepts are defined by systematic mappings from body-based, sensorimotor source domains onto abstract target domains" (177). He explains the "conceptual mapping of entities and relations" and what they consist of (177). He also defines primary metaphors: "A primary metaphor is based on experiential correlation between a particular sensorimotor domain and and some domain pertaining to a subjective experience or judgement" (178). He also claims that primary metaphors "arise naturally from our embodied experience" (178). Johnson also talks about metaphorical logic and explains that "we have not developed two separate logical and inferential systems, one for our bodily experiences and one for our abstract concepts and reasoning. Instead, the logic of our bodily experience provides all the logic we need in order to perform everyday rational inference, even with the most abstract concepts" (179). Johnson also discuses "Conceptual Metaphor as a Basis for Abstract Conceptualization and Reasoning" and "Evidence for Conceptual Metaphor and Its Role in Abstract Reasoning" before speaking about metaphor being the basis for Philosophy. In this sub-section Johnson "suggest[s] that the bodily grounding of philosophical ideas via metaphors is not a liability of the discipline, but rather is what makes philosophy potentially important for our lives" and explains the history of metaphor and philosophy (186). On that matter, Johnson states: "Philosophy's debt to metaphor is profound and immeasurable" (186). He even includes discussions such as "Philosophical Concepts Are Metaphoric," "Metaphor and Contemporary Philosophy of Language," "Philosophy as Metaphor," and "Philosophy's Debt to Metaphor" within his argument on metaphor's role in Philosophy. In the chapter, Johnson states that his argument that metaphorical language is fundamental to Philosophy is "not now, nor has it ever been, widely excepted by Philosophers. I know he briefly explains the opposition to his arguments, but it made me wonder: why are philosophers so apposed to philosophy's connection to/with metaphor? My question at issue has only changed a little and remains almost the same: “What age do children begin using metaphorical language and what age do they understand metaphorical language?” I also want to answer the question “how do they learn metaphorical language?”
My working thesis is that children begin using metaphorical language at the age of 4, but that they don’t fully comprehend metaphorical language until around the ages of 8-10. I still haven’t found any information on exactly how they learn metaphorical language except that they begin comprehending metaphors in school on basic emotions (fear, joy, anger) and if you use metaphors in relation to objects they understand such as toys, cars, food, etc. My research is the only reason why I have answers to my question at issue. Before researching this topic, I truly had no idea what age children began using metaphorical language or when they understood that they were using metaphors. Now that I have looked into others’ research on the topic, including one field research test on elementary children who had to match together basic metaphors with the emotion it correlated with (for example matching the metaphor “my blood is boiling” to the emotion “anger”). It is a super interesting topic to look into! Within chapter 8 of The Meaning of the Body, Johnson discusses the importance of cognitive neuroscience within meaning and how it will help us understand meaning better: "Chapter 8 investigates some of the neural bases for our ability to process both concrete and abstract concepts. I draw on recent research in cognitive neuroscience about the role of neural ensembles in conceptualization" (112).
In his first section within the chapter, Johnson explains "Why Cognitive Neuroscience Matters." He writes: "In order to have human meaning, you need a human brain, operating in a living human body, continually interacting with a human environment that is at once physical, social and cultural. ...Although the brain alone cannot give us meaning, it is surely the supreme bodily organ in the construction of meaning" (155). He also discusses the "immaturity of cognitive neuroscience" within this section (156). In the following section, Johnson talks about "Embodied Concepts" and explains "concepts are not inner mental entities that re-present external realities. Rather, concepts are neural activation patterns that can either be 'turned on' by some actual perceptual or motoric event in our bodies, or else activated when we merely think about something, without actually perceiving it or performing a specific action" (157). Also, in this section, Johnson examines how concepts "emerge in the process of an embodied organism's ongoing engagement with its environment" (157). He also talks about abstract thought from an "abstract angle." He writes: Image schemas and conceptual metaphors and metonymies are not the only embodied structures of abstract thinking. All aspects of grammar-- the binding of form and meaning -- and all aspects of logical relations need to be accounted for through ties to body-based meaning. He also "[suggests] some strategies that might prove helpful in dealing with the full scope of our capacities for abstract conceptualization and reasoning" (170). In the chapter, he discusses how the brain is the most important aspect to understanding meaning between the mind, the body, and the environment. But I want to pose the question "Why?" I can understand why Johnson thinks the most important aspect is the brain because it is the part of the body that makes us think, and thinking brings meaning. However, if you look at it that way, aren't all the aspects as equally important? If we have a brain and no body, the brain cannot live -- therefore, the body is just as important. And if we have a working brain and a functional body, but no environment or experiences that are social, physical, or cultural then how would we derive meaning from anything if we just sat around with nothing to stimulate us... Does that make sense? Within chapter 7 of The Meaning of the Body, Johnson talks about "The Corporeal Roots of Symbolic Meaning" and cognition, as well as re-addressing image schemas and Organism-Environment Coupling (along with other couplings): "The key to ontological continuity is the coupling ... of an organism... and its environment. ... [Let's] consider some of the most basic kinds of structural couplings that make up our human experience of our world" (136).
Within "Image Schemas and Cross-Modal Perception," Johnson defines image schemas as "these basic structures of sensorimotor experience by which we encounter a world that we can understand and act within. An image schema is a dynamic, recurring pattern of organism-environment interactions" (136). He also breaks down the 3 "important aspects of image schemas relating to the grounding of meaning:" 1. "image schemas are an important part of what makes it possible for our bodily experiences to have meaning for us" (139). 2. "there is a logic of image-schematic structure" (139). 3. "image schemas are not to be understood as either merely 'mental' or merely 'bodily,' but rather as contours of what Dewey called the body-mind" (139). While discussing image schemas, Johnson also claims that "They lie at the heart of meaning, and they underlie language, abstract reasoning, and all forms of symbolic interaction" (145). When discussing "Image Schemas Bind Body and Mind," Johnson writes: "there still remains a justifiable reason to use the term representation whenever we want to speak of words, signs, symbols, or actions as representations. For a scientific account of cognition, we don't need representations. But the term may be useful whenever we have formalisms that claim to capture the structure of something" (146). In the last section of the chapter ("The Social, Intersubjective Character of Embodied Cognition"), Johnson states: "language and abstract reason are socially and culturally situated activities" and that he wants to "identify the social dimension as essential to our capacity for meaning and thoughtful inquiry" (147). He also discusses the mind: "[The mind] emerges as, and is enacted through, social cognition. ...we are not born with minds fully formed and ready for thinking. Instead, we acquire 'minds' through our coordinated sharing of meaning and our concomitant ability to engage in symbolic interaction" (151). Johnson puts a lot of stock into Image Schemas. After reading this chapter, do you buy his argument? Do you also think that image schemas are fundamental to meaning? Think about it... |
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Hello! My name is Alex Hopkins. I am currently a graduate student at ASU and working toward obtaining my Masters in English. After that, I plan on getting a doctorate in English Literature so that I may teach at the Collegiate level. I currently work at the ASU Writing Center, but starting this Fall semester, I will be teaching my own ENG 1301 classes! :) I am married and have a little girl named Farryn. My hobbies include: reading, cooking, watching movies, crocheting, and spending time with my family. ArchivesCategories
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