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1 - Embodiment in Metaphor and (Not?) in Bilingual Language

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2015

By
Albert Katz  and
Andrea Bowes
Edited by
Roberto R. Heredia  and
Anna B. Cieślicka
Albert Katz
Affiliation:
University of Western Ontario;
Andrea Bowes
Affiliation:
St. Thomas University
Roberto R. Heredia
Affiliation:
Texas A & M University
Anna B. Cieślicka
Affiliation:
Texas A & M University
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Summary

Abstract

In this chapter we look at the role that sensory motor activation plays in the understanding of figurative and bilingual language. The chapter is divided into three basic parts. First we examine what is known about the evolution of human language, with reference to figurative and bilingual language activities, emphasizing the emerging conceptualization that sensory-motor brain areas have played a vital role. In the next section we examine how this emerging conceptualization that language might be embodied has been translated into our understanding of online comprehension tasks in general and, increasingly, in grounding our understanding of figurative language. The last section examines how the notion of embodied cognition has been viewed in our understanding of bilingual language, noting the near absence of a relevant literature. We conclude by indicating some aspects of the archival bilingual processing literature that could benefit from taking an embodied perspective.

Keywords: bilingual embodiment, embodied cognition, figurative language, language evolution, metaphor processing

The classic approach in both the study of bilingualism and of figurative language has taken an amodal computational perspective. From this perspective, these models have been based on the assumption that the basic representational aspects of language are tied to symbols, which themselves are not tied to direct experience with the environments in which they have developed and in which they are expressed. In contrast, starting about a decade or so ago, an alternative approach has emerged in which language comprehension is directly and inextricably tied to a relationship between bodily experiences and language.

Type
Chapter
Information
Bilingual Figurative Language Processing , pp. 3 - 27
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2015

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