Abstract
One recent trend in metaphor studies is to deny the possibility that most verbal metaphors really convey metaphoric meanings via cross-domain mappings. Instead, only a small number of verbal metaphors, those presumably produced “deliberately” and “consciously,” ever alert listeners or readers to draw cross-domain inferences. Xu, Zhang, and Wu (2016. Enlarging the scope of metaphor studies. Intercultural Pragmatics 13. 439–447) describe several ways in which this “deliberate metaphor theory” may extend contemporary metaphor research. Our reply notes that this perspective is completely contradicted by cognitive linguistic and cognitive science empirical findings, and, ironically, ignores both communication and consciousness in its efforts to provide a new, improved theory of metaphor. We argue that the new alternative is a regressive attempt to take metaphor studies back to the stone ages of scholarship in which only certain verbal metaphors really reflect true metaphoric thinking.
About the authors
Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr. is Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is the author of “Poetics of mind: Figurative thought, language and understanding” (1994), “Intentions in the experience of meaning” (1999), “Embodiment and cognitive science” (2006), and, with Herb Colston, “Interpreting figurative meaning” (2012). His newest book is “Metaphor wars: Conceptual metaphor in human life” (2017). He is also editor of “Cambridge handbook of metaphor and thought” (2008), and the journal “Metaphor and Symbol.”
Elaine Chen is a graduate student in cognitive psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research interests are in embodied cognition and figurative language.
References
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