On the cognitive dimension of metaphors and their role in education: a response to Molina Rodelo (2021)

Abstract

This paper offers an alternative reading of the cognitive dimension of metaphors. In contrast to Molina Rodelo’s analysis (2021), the present model opposes the views held by the Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) and The Mental Spaces Theory. I argue that metaphors are part of broader cognitive phenomena (embodied cognition) issued from the speakers’ experience with the world. In other words, metaphors are not a by-product of sensorimotor experience, a simulation, as CMT claims. As a result, metaphors are construed as embodied units of sense for the shared reconstruction of experience.

Keywords

• embodied cognition
• concepts
• essentialism
• embodied metaphor
• education
• conceptual metaphor theory