Die Analyse ‘synästhetischer‘ Metaphern mittels Frames

Abstract

Genuine synesthesia is about the intermodal or cross-modal integration into combined longlasting or even permanent idiosyncratic qualia of purely visual, auditory, gustatory or other sensory perceptions, which, usually, are processed neuronally separated from each other. Linguistic metaphors, however, and hence „synesthetic” metaphors should be regarded as only a kind of a language-based multimodal hyper-integration conceptually linked to semantic fields or frames. Without recourse to any direct perceptual reverse binding, different conceptual domains become accessible due to a shift between two domains, which, provided that it is licensed through a correspondence or an analogy between the relevant domainspecific characteristic features, imports one or more features from the source domain into the target domain, thus embedding them in the new environment in an innovative manner. Phenomena of genuine synaesthesia are to be considered independent of the specifics and performance of linguistic metaphors and constitute phenomena sui generis. A basic characteristic of linguistic metaphors is that they constantly establish a link between otherwise separate cognitive spheres of human empirical knowledge with each other, thus achieving an optimization of a speaker’s expressive potential with regard to lexical needs, to the clarity of expression and to linguistic pregnance as well.