Schematizing the Maternal Body

The Cognitive-Linguistic Challenge to Poststructuralist Valorizations of Metonymy

Résumé

This paper uses cognitive linguistics to re-evaluate — for feminist theory — one of the main organizing principles of poststructuralism: the binary opposition between metonymy and metaphor. In so doing, it counters the poststructuralist assumption that metonymic readings are fundamentally liberatory while metaphoric ones are essentially oppressive. Relying chiefly on the experientialism of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (1980, 1987, 1999), it maintains that both metonymy and metaphor are flexible constituents of an (Lakoff 1987: xiv) “ecological structure” of mind; accordingly, they appear in various combinations to support any number of rhetorical perspectives. Specifically, it explores the potential value of Lakoffian image-schemas to popular discussions of the maternal body — an apt site from which to consider the limits of poststructuralism and the possibilities for feminism of more holistic analyses.