The neural dimension of metaphor

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to examine the neural aspect of metaphor. The neural theory of language stems from the cognitive linguistic research and is an effort to comprehend the way neural circuits affect and shape human language and thought. Metaphor within the framework of many approach­es was seen as a deviant means of language meaning or a figure of speech assigned to rhetorical and aesthetical purposes. Contrary to these well established beliefs, cognitive linguistic view points at the ubiquity of metaphor in ordinary speech and furthermore suggests, through experi­mental findings, the embodied nature of many abstract concepts. That is, the choice to speak in metaphorical terms is inevitable since it is based on neural connections in different cerebral areas of the brain arising naturally from the interaction of people with their bodies