Chapter 12. Metaphorical instruction and body memory

The aim of this chapter is to discuss how and why metaphorical instructions work during movement learning. The claim of subject-oriented research in movement science and cognitive semantics is that meaning articulation is grounded in movement execution. Movement is considered as a transmodal meaning-articulation, which is important for the relationship between the environment and the subject. Image schematic processes of meaning generation will be examined in detail. At the level of image schemata there are explicit interferences between the contents of natural language and movement, because language is bodily anchored. Experimental evidence suggests that semantic processing of metaphoric information within a dynamic agent-environment interaction is more efficient than processing of non-metaphorical information.