Cover not available

In:Perception Metaphors
Edited by Laura J. Speed, Carolyn O'Meara, Lila San Roque and Asifa Majid
[Converging Evidence in Language and Communication Research 19] 2019
► pp. 1–16

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
authorization required

Chapter 1
Perception metaphors

A view from diversity

 | National Autonomous University of Mexico, Radboud University
 | Radboud University, University of York
 | Radboud University
 | Radboud University, University of York
Published online: 21 February 2019
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/celcr.19.01ome
Abstract
Our bodily experiences play an important role in the way that we think and speak. Abstract language is, however, difficult to reconcile with this body-centred view, unless we appreciate the role metaphors play. To explore the role of the senses across semantic domains, we focus on perception metaphors, and examine their realisation across diverse languages, methods, and approaches. To what extent do mappings in perception metaphor adhere to predictions based on our biological propensities; and to what extent is there space for cross-linguistic and cross-cultural variation? We find that while some metaphors have widespread commonality, there is more diversity attested than should be comfortable for universalist accounts.
Article outline
  • 1.Metaphor and perception
  • 2.Perception metaphor and directionality
  • 3.Perception metaphor and diversity
  • 4.Concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
References (66)
References
Akpinar, E. & Berger, J. (2015). Drivers of cultural success: The case of sensory metaphors. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 109(1), 20–34.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ashley, R. (2004). Musical pitch space across modalities: Spatial and other mappings through language and culture. In Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition (Vol. 72). Adelaide, Australia: Causal Productions.
Barsalou, L. W. (1999) Perceptual Perceptual symbol systems. Brain and Behavioral Science, 22(4), 577-609.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Berlin, B., & Kay, P. (1964). Basic color terms: Their universality and evolution. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Boroditsky, L. (2000). Metaphoric structuring: Understanding time through spatial metaphors. Cognition, 75(1), 1–28.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Casasanto, D., & Boroditsky, L. (2008). Time in the mind: Using space to think about time. Cognition, 106, 579–593.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Clark, H. H. (1973). Space, time, semantics, and the child. In T. E. Moore (Ed.), Cognitive development and the acquisition of language (pp. 27–63). New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Croijmans, I. & Majid, A. (2016). Not all flavor expertise is equal: The language of wine and coffee experts. PLoS ONE 5(5): e0155845.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dingemanse, M. (2011). The meaning and use of ideophones in Siwu. Ph.D. Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dingemanse, M., & Majid, A. (2012). The semantic structure of sensory vocabulary in an African language. In N. Miyake, D. Peebles, & R. P. Cooper (Eds.), Proceedings of the 34th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2012) (pp. 300–305). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.
Dolscheid, S., Shayan, S., Majid, A., & Casasanto, D. (2013). The thickness of musical pitch: Psychophysical evidence for linguistic relativity. Psychological Science, 24(5), 613–621.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Engen, T. (1987). Remembering odors and their names. American Scientist, 497–503.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Evans, N. & Wilkins, D. (2000). In the mind’s ear: The semantic extensions of perception verbs in Australian languages. Language, 76(3), 546–592.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Geurts, K. L. (2002) Culture and the senses: Bodily ways of knowing in an African community. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gibbs, R. W. (1994). The poetics of mind: Figurative thought, language and understanding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gilead, M., Gal, O., Polak, M., & Cholow, Y. (2015). The role of nature and nurture in conceptual metaphors: The case of gustatory priming. Social Psychology, 46, 167–173.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Goldberg, R. F., Perfetti, C. A. & Schneider, W. (2006a). Perceptual knowledge retrieval activates sensory brain regions. Journal of Neuroscience, 26(18), 4917–4921.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Goldberg, R. F., Perfetti, C. A., & Schneider, W. (2006b). Distinct and common cortical activations for multimodal semantic categories. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 6(3), 214–222.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ibarretxe-Antuñano, I. (1999). Polysemy and metaphor in perception verbs: A cross-linguistic study. PhD Thesis. University of Edinburgh.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Idström, A. & Piirainen, E. (2012). Endangered metaphors. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
IJzerman, H., & Semin, G. R. (2009). The thermometer of social relations: Mapping social proximity on temperature. Psychological Science, 20(10), 1214–1220.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jamrozik, A., McQuire, M., Cardillo, E. R., Chatterjee, A. (2016). Metaphor: Bridging embodiment to abstraction. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 23(4): 1080–1089.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Johnson, C. (1999). Metaphor vs. conflation in the acquisition of polysemy: The case of see. In M. K. Hiraga, C. Sinha & S. Wilcox (Eds.), Cultural, psychological and typological issues in cognitive linguistics: Selected papers of the bi-annual ICLA meeting in Albuquerque, July 1995 (pp.155–170).Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kay, P., Berlin, B., Maffi, L., Merrifield, W. R., & Cook, R. (2009). The world color survey. Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Koptjevskaja-Tamm, M. (Ed.). (2015). The linguistics of temperature. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kousta, S. T., Vigliocco, G., Vinson, D. P., Andrews, M., & Del Campo, E. (2011). The representation of abstract words: why emotion matters. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 140(1), 14–34.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lacey, S., Stilla, R., & Sathian, K. (2012). Metaphorically feeling: comprehending textural metaphors activates somatosensory cortex. Brain and language, 120(3), 416–421.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lakoff, G., & Kövecses, Z. (1987). The cognitive model of anger inherent in American English. In D. Holland & N. Quinn (Eds.), Cultural models in language and thought (pp. 195–221). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lakoff, G. & Turner, M. (1989). More than cool reason: A field guide to poetic metaphor. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Le Guen, O. (2011) Materiality vs. expressivity: The use of sensory vocabulary in Yucatec Maya. Senses & Society 6(1), pp. 117–125.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lee, S. W., & Schwarz, N. (2012). Bidirectionality, mediation, and moderation of metaphorical effects: The embodiment of social suspicion and fishy smells. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 103(5), 737–749.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Levinson, S. C. (2000). Yélî Dnye and the theory of basic color terms. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 10(1), 3–55.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Levinson, S. C., Majid, A., & Enfield, N. J. (2007). Language of perception: The view from language and culture. In A. Majid (Ed.), Field Manual Volume 10 (pp. 10–21). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Levinson, S. C., & Majid, A. (2014). Differential ineffability and the senses. Mind & Language, 29(4), 407–427.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lynott, D., & Connell, L. (2009). Modality exclusivity norms for 423 object properties. Behavior Research Methods, 41(2), 558–564.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2013). Modality exclusivity norms for 400 nouns: The relationship between perceptual experience and surface word form. Behavior Research Methods, 45(2), 516–526.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mahon, B. Z., & Caramazza, A. (2008). A critical look at the embodied cognition hypothesis and a new proposal for grounding conceptual content. Journal of Physiology-Paris, 102(1), 59–70.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Majid, A. (2013). Making semantics and pragmatics “sensory”. Journal of Pragmatics, 58, 48–51.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Majid, A., & Burenhult, N. (2014). Odors are expressible in language, as long as you speak the right language. Cognition, 130(2), 266–270.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Majid, A. & Levinson, S. C. (2011). The senses in language and culture. Senses & Society, 6(1), 5–18.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Majid, A., Roberts, S. G., Cilissen, L., Emmorey, K., Nicodemus, B., O’Grady, L., Woll, B., LeLan, B., de Sousa, H., Cansler, B. L., Shayan, S., de Vos, C., Senft, G., Enfield, N. J., Razak, R. A., Fedden, S., Tufvesson, S., Dingemanse, M., Oztürk, O., Brown, P., Hill, C., Le Guen, O., Hirtzel, V., van Gijn, R., Sicoli, M. A., & Levinson, S. C. (in press). The differential coding of perception in the world’s languages. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Matissof, J. A. (1978). Variational semantics in Tibeto-Burman: The ‘organic’ approach to linguistic comparison. Occasional Papers of the Wolfenden Society on Tibeto-Burman Linguistics, Volume VI. Philadelphia, PA: Institute for the Study of Human Issues (ISHI).Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Moseley, R., Carota, F., Hauk, O., Mohr, B., Pulvermüller, F. (2012). A rol for the motor system in binding abstract emotional meaning. Cerebral Cortex, 22(7): 1634-1647.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nakagawa, H. 2012. The importance of taste verbs in some Khoe languages. Linguistics 50(3), 395–420.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Olofsson, J. K., & Gottfried, J. A. (2015). The muted sense: Neurocognitive limitations of olfactory language. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 19(6), 314–321.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
O’Meara, C. & Majid, A. (submitted). Anger stinks in Seri: Olfactory metaphor in a lesser-described language.
Pecher, D., & Zwaan, R. A. (Eds.) (2005). The grounding of cognition: The role of perception and action in memory, language, and thinking. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
San Roque, L., Kendrick, K. H., Norcliffe, E., Brown, P., Defina, R., Dingemanse, M., Dirksmeyer, T., Enfield, N. J., Floyd, S., Hammond, J., Rossi, G., Tufvesson, S., Van Putten, S., & Majid, A. (2015). Vision verbs dominate in conversation across cultures, but the ranking of non-visual verbs varies. Cognitive Linguistics, 26(1), 31–60.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
San Roque, L., Kendrick, K. H., Norcliffe, E. & Majid, A. (2018). Universal meaning extensions of perception verbs are grounded in interaction. Cognitive Linguistics, 29(3), 371-406.
CrossRef DOI logo with hyperlink to permanent DOI
.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schaefer, M., Denke, C., Heinze, H. J., & Rotte, M. (2013). Rough primes and rough conversations: Evidence for a modality-specific basis to mental metaphors. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 9(11), 1653–1659.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schmidt-Snoek, G. L., Drew, A. R., Barile, E. C., & Agauas, S. J. (2015). Auditory and motion metaphors have different scalp distributions: an ERP study. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 9, 126.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schwager, W., & Zeshan, U. (2008). Word classes in sign languages: Criteria and classifications. Studies in Language, 32(3), 509–545.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Shayan, S., Ozturk, O., & Sicoli, M. A. (2011). The Thickness of pitch: Crossmodal metaphors in Farsi, Turkish, and Zapotec. Senses & Society, 6(1), 96–105.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Speed, L. J., & Majid, A. (2018). An exception to mental simulation: No evidence for embodied odor language. Cognitive Science, 42(4), 1146-1178. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2017). Dutch modality exclusivity norms: Simulating perceptual modality in space. Behavior Research Methods, 49(6), 2204–2218.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stone, R. M. (1981). Toward a Kpelle conceptualization of music performance. The Journal of American Folklore, 94(372), 188–206.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Surrallés, A. (2016). On contrastive perception and ineffability: assessing sensory experience without colour terms in an Amazonian society. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 22(4), 962–979.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sweetser, E. (1990). From etymology to pragmatics. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Traugott, E. L. (1975). Spatial expressions of tense and temporal sequencing: A contribution to the study of semantic fields. Semiotica, 15(3), 207–230.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Viberg, Å. (1983). The verbs of perception: A typological study. Linguistics 21(1), 123–162.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vigliocco, G., Kousta, S. T., Della Rosa, P. A., Vinson, D. P., Tettamanti, M., Devlin, J. T., & Cappa, S. F. (2013). The neural representation of abstract words: the role of emotion. Cerebral Cortex, 24(7), 1767–1777.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wilkowski, B. M., Meier, B. P., Robinson, M. D., Carter, M. S., & Feltman, R. (2009). “Hot-headed” is more than an expression: The embodied representation of anger in terms of heat. Emotion, 9(4), 464–477.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Williams, J. M. (1976). Synaesthetic adjectives: A possible law of semantic change. Language, 52(2). 461–478.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Yu, N. (1995). Metaphorical expressions of anger and happiness in English and Chinese. Metaphor and Symbol, 10(2), 59–92.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zbikowski, L. (1998). Metaphor and music theory: Reflections from cognitive science. Music Theory Online, 4(1),1–11.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (8)

Cited by eight other publications

Staniewski, Przemysław
2025. Figurativität im Bereich des pejorativ gebrauchten Wahrnehmungswortschatzes im Deutschen. In Germanistik international und interdisziplinär, ► pp. 311 ff. DOI logo
Tóth, Máté
2024. A case for metonymic synesthesia. Review of Cognitive Linguistics 22:1 ► pp. 70 ff. DOI logo
EŞİM, İbrahim & Serhat ZAMAN
2022. COĞRAFYA BÖLÜMÜ LİSANS ÖĞRENCİLERİNİN “BALKANLAR” ÜZERİNE OLAN ALGILARININ METAFORLAR ARACILIĞIYLA BELİRLENMESİ. Ankara Anadolu ve Rumeli Araştırmaları Dergisi 3:5 ► pp. 135 ff. DOI logo
Kalda, Anu
2022. Translating perception metaphors: Linguistic, cultural and social implications. Taikomoji kalbotyra 16 ► pp. 86 ff. DOI logo
BAŞ, Melike
2021. tat- Eyleminin Anlam Genişlemesi Üzerine Bir İnceleme. Akademik Dil ve Edebiyat Dergisi 5:2 ► pp. 1538 ff. DOI logo
SPEED, LAURA J.
2021.  Bodo Winter, Sensory Linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2019. Pp. 289. ISBN: 978-9-0272-0310-6.. Language and Cognition 13:2 ► pp. 327 ff. DOI logo
Speed, Laura J. & Asifa Majid
2020. Grounding language in the neglected senses of touch, taste, and smell. Cognitive Neuropsychology 37:5-6 ► pp. 363 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2022. Motion metaphors in music criticism [Metaphor in Language, Cognition, and Communication, 10], DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue