Wednesday, February 21, 2024, 11am - 1pm
UMC 247

Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr.

Independent Cognitive Scientist听

Abstract

The human body has historically been viewed as a natural, purely biological entity that is mostly separate from the mind. However, much work in embodied cognition has revealed the significant extent to which people鈥檚 knowledge and experience of their bodies are recruited in a wide range of abstract thinking abilities, primarily through the mechanism of metaphor. Bodily experiences serve as the source domains to better understand less structured, and typically more abstract, target domains (e.g., LIFE IS A JOURNEY in which bodily experiences associated with journeys are mapped to better structure our understanding of life). My talk explores the possibility that many source domains arising from bodily experiences may themselves be inherently metaphorical. I present a variety of examples from cognitive linguistics, psychology, and medical anthropology to show how varied bodily experiences are likely understood in symbolic and metaphorical terms. Following this, I discuss possible skeptical responses to my claim that bodily experience is inherently metaphorical (i.e., the 鈥渕etaphorical embodiment hypothesis鈥�). Finally, I outline several implications of this metaphorical embodiment hypothesis for cognitive linguistics and our theoretical understanding of metaphor, embodiment, and human cognition.

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Biographical Information

Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr. is an independent cognitive scientist, formerly Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His research interests focus on embodied cognition, pragmatics and figurative language. He is the author of many books, including "The poetics of mind: Figurative thought, language and understanding" (1994), "Intentions in the experience of meaning" (1999), "Embodiment and cognitive science" (2006), 鈥淢etaphor wars: Conceptual metaphor in human life鈥� (2017), and (with Herb Colston) "Interpreting figurative meaning" (2012), all published by Cambridge University Press. He is also editor of the "Cambridge handbook of metaphor and thought"(2008) (CUP), and (with Herb Colston) the 鈥淐ambridge handbook of irony and thought鈥� (2023).