CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW
2.2 Conceptual Metaphor in Gesture
phrases can facilitate people’s immediate comprehension of the metaphors.
2.2 Conceptual Metaphor in Gesture
So far, we have discussed the studies on linguistic expressions of metaphors. However,
some scholars suspect that the language-based analysis can directly reflect the pattern of our
thought (Murphy 1996, 1997; Glucksberg 2001). It is suggested that evidence from different
aspects other than language is needed for the discussion about metaphor. Gestural studies
may help to enhance the cognitive reality of metaphors. Since metaphors are conceptual,
language is not the exclusive realization of metaphors. Gesture is regarded as an independent
non-verbal modality where we may find the metaphorical expressions (Cienki 2008; Cienki
& Müller 2008; Müller 2008; Gibbs 2008b). In McNeill’s Hand and Mind, he declared:
Gestures are like thoughts themselves. They belong, not to the outside world, but to the inside one of memory, thought, and mental images. Gesture images are complex, intricately interconnected, and not at all like photographs. Gestures open up a wholly new way of regarding thought process, language, and the interaction of people (McNeill 1992: 12).
Likewise, Cienki (2008) claims that spontaneous gestures are produced unconsciously while
speaking and that they can provide insight into thought formulation. According to McNeill
(1992: 14), metaphoric gestures are “like iconic gestures in that they are pictorial, but the
pictorial content presents an abstract idea rather than a concrete object or event...[and]
presents an image of the invisible—an image of an abstraction”. The imagery presented by a
metaphoric gesture serves as the source domain, and the abstract concept which the imagery
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conveys is the target domain.
The research on gestures can provide insight for the issue about metaphor. Metaphoric
gestures do not merely duplicate what we find in metaphors conveyed in language; they may
profile different aspects of metaphorical concepts (Cienki 2008; Cienki & Müller 2008). For
instance, the temporal ordering may be realized via the metaphors with different spatial
orientations. In European languages, the future is thought to be located ahead of us and the
past event comes to us before the future event (Cienki 2008). We may say I did X before Y
where X is the past event, yet it is unusual to say I did X to the left of Y to mean the same idea.
However, Calbris (2008: 43) found a gestural data that the order of time is metaphorically
expressed via the left-right orientation. In the example offered by Calbris, the speaker’s left
index finger moves to the left to present the metaphor PAST IS LEFT; his right index finger
moves to the right to realize the metaphor FUTURE IS RIGHT. Although the metaphors based
on left-right orientation are rare in linguistic data, the gestural data can provide evidence for
the cognitive reality for the metaphors PAST IS LEFT and FUTURE IS RIGHT. The case
suggests that gestures can provide additional evidence of the source-to-target
correspondences.
Gesture is not only an important modality to reflect our thought but also an
independent source to reinforce the psychological reality of conceptual metaphors. Müller
(2008) examined data taken from narrative interviews and conversations and finds that
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metaphor is presented in linguistic and gestural modalities at the same time. The finding
supports the view that metaphor is not a phenomenon of language. He also observed that
metaphors are not just single lexical terms or idioms. Gestural data shows that a metaphor can
persist over longer pieces of discourse and supports the assumption that a metaphor can be
the product of the general cognitive process structuring an entire argument.
Spontaneous gesture is “[a]nother important form of embodiment in language”
(Barsalou 2008: 629). In the past research on language, image schema has been studied as the
embodied source of metaphors. With regard to the gestural modality, Cienki’s (2005)
investigation proves that image schema could be used reliably to characterize co-speech
gesture. In his experiment, participants watch videos clips showing a person making hand
gestures with or without sound. After watching each clip, they need to choose an appropriate
description for the hand movement by circling a word from a given list which contains
several terms of image schema and the term other. Results show that the category of other
was seldom used. Although each stimulus provokes a variable response, there is a statistically
reliable agreement about what schema would be elicited by each gesture. Despite the
idiosyncratic forms of the gestures with the same meaning, most of them shared a basis in our
experience. Image schemas might provide common patterns underlying idiosyncratic gestures
(Cienki 2005). Furthermore, image schema is proposed to be one of the iconic symbols that
build the foundation for metaphoric projections in gesture by Mittelberg (2008). In her
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research, semiotic theory and conceptual metaphor theory are combined in the analysis of the
lectures by linguistic professors.
Gestural expressions help us explore the embodied nature of conceptual metaphor. At
the same time, metaphoric gestures offer visible evidence for how metaphors are grounded in
non-metaphoric embodied patterns. Núñez (2008) examined the lectures by mathematicians
to look at the foundation of mathematics. He analyzes the mathematical expressions to
discuss pure mathematical ideas such as approaching limits and oscillating function. The
expressions are used to describe facts about numbers or the result of the operations with
numbers, and there is nothing really moving. For instance, Núñez observed that a professor
moves his right hand back and forth horizontally while he uttered still oscillate (2008: 108).
The linguistic expressions about mathematics may be accompanied with spontaneous
gestures depicting the fictive motions for the static numbers. Therefore, Núñez claimed that
metaphoric expressions about mathematics are not simply dead metaphors. He also concludes
that mathematics, the most abstract concept, is ultimately grounded in the human body.
There are studies on the metaphoric gestures in the conversation in Chinese as well. In
Chui’s (2011, 2013) studies on Chinese discourse, she maintained that gesture can provide
visible evidence for the presence of source domains in metaphorical correspondences. She
also claimed that many metaphors in language are substantiated by metaphoric gestures. The
manifestations of metaphors in the use of hand gesture demonstrate that metaphorical
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expressions are not lexicalized. The bodily experiences can affect the performance of
metaphors in gesture, revealing that “even the most clichéd metaphoric phrases are not
understood through simple retrieval of their meanings stored in a phrasal, mental lexicon”
(Gibbs 2008a: 295). Furthermore, Chui (2011) found that gestures may provide additional
information about which aspect of the concept gains a speaker’s focus of attention in
real-time communication. The metaphor TIME IS SPACE can be realized in different spatial
orientations which conveys different viewpoints. For instance, PAST is gestured forward with
time-moving perspective and backward with an ego-moving perspective at different moments
of speaking. In general, “gestures make knowledge and the situated-dynamic aspect of
cognition visible” (Chui 2013: 61).
Previous research on metaphors in gesture has provided considerable empirical
evidence for the reality of metaphorical thinking and the embodiment of metaphor in body
experiences and socio-culture practices. Different kinds of gestural expressions of metaphors
can be found in these studies as well. However, the past studies in gesture merely adopt
qualitative analysis. To discuss the habitual expressions of different metaphor types as well as
the source and target domains in metaphorical correspondences, the present study would like
to apply quantitative analysis in the investigation of metaphors in gesture in conversations.
The present study is then able to have reliable evidence from the quantitative data to compare
the metaphors in language and gesture and the metaphors in gesture-only.