Rediscovering the cognitive-semiotic and cognitive-pragmatic approaches to metaphor in the work of Johann Heinrich Lambert and Philipp Wegener

Résumé

Since the advent of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) more than thirty years ago, many researchers have pointed to the problems of this approach due to its lack of historiographical contextualization, given that the major hypotheses of conceptual metaphor as well as many examples were already anticipated by philosophers, anthropologists, psychologists and linguists from the 17th century onwards. The article introduces two authors from the 18th and 19th centuries: the philosopher Johann Heinrich Lambert (1764/1965) and the linguist Paul Wegener (1885/1991). Not only did they develop a cognitive theory of metaphors ‘we live by’ but they also included some pragmatic aspects rediscovered in recent works on cognitive metaphor and characterized as issues disregarded by the first generation of CMT. Therefore, remembering the works of Lambert and Wegener may help to build a bridge from their work to current discussions. On the one hand, the approaches of both scholars allude to ways of overcoming the cleavage between the solipsistic individual and society; on the other hand, both works address the dichotomy of universalism and cultural relativity. Most importantly, they concurrently understand metaphor as a cognitive and intersubjective phenomenon negotiated between participants in real communication.