The Visual Memory of Grammar

Iconographical and Metaphorical Insights

Abstract

This study represents an interdisciplinary attempt to trace the origins of metaphorical expressions as they are found in English grammatical terminology. The perspective chosen combines cognitive and art-historical approaches to the meaning of abstract concepts: cognitive semantics and iconography. It takes into account the historical dimension of the media which have served, over the course of centuries, to render abstract concepts graspable: figurative language, visual images, and the printed page. By taking a close look at examples from an iconography of grammar created for the purpose of this study (which includes personifications, allegories and memory buildings from the early Modern period), I shall discuss the visual traditions and patterns in the representation of abstract concepts and structures. In the second part of this paper, the theory of conceptual metaphor is applied to one of these educational and mnemonic illustrations, whereby the metaphorical concepts underlying expressions in both media are presented and linguistic metaphors are related to their visual counterparts. The aim is to provide insights into the conventional repertoire of images of grammar as a discipline and as a symbolic system.