Embodiment and Body Metaphors

Résumé

This article calls into question the connection between metaphors using the body or body parts as domains in metaphoric mappings, and the notion of embodiment. First, I will outline some reasons for the confusion with the term “embodiment” (as well as “embodied mind”, and “embodied cognition”), and explain how wide or narrow a useful definition for Cognitive Linguistics should be. Second, I ask for the status of a piece of empirical evidence which is frequently used as an argument for the importance of embodiment: body metaphors. I use empirical studies including research on everyday language, media and scientific discourse to show that there is more to those body metaphors than a simple mapping from one concrete domain onto another more abstract one. Thus, occurrences of metaphors where body parts are mapped onto other domains cannot be directly used as a proof of the embodiment hypothesis. I argue for a careful use of the term “body” and for the search of more empirical evidence for the grounding of metaphors and “basic experiences”.