Embodiment and image schemas
Many cognitive semanticists stress the embodied nature of the conceptualizations underlying language. To say that a conceptualization is embodied is to draw attention to its origin in basic physical experience. Johnson (1987) pointed out that much language use reflects patterns in our own bodily experience, particularly our perceptual interactions, movements and manipulations of objects. Particularly basic patterns of repeated experience give rise to the conceptual categories which Johnson called image schemas, such as CONTAINMENT, SOURCE-PATH-GOAL, FORCE, BALANCE and others. These ‘operate as organizing structures of our experience and understanding at the level of bodily perception and movement’ (Johnson 1987: 20), and thus also underlie the conceptual categories deployed in language. For instance, from an early age we frequently experience containment and boundedness, interacting with containers of different sorts. The most important type of container with which we interact is our own body, which functions as a container into which we put things like food, water and air. We also experience physical containment in our surroundings, interacting with receptacles of many sorts. These repeated patterns of spatial and temporal organization give rise to the image schema of CONTAINMENT, which underlies the linguistic representation of many scenes, and which Johnson diagrams, very simply, as follows:
Our real-life experience of containers establishes the following pieces of typical knowledge about containment:
• the experience of containment usually involves protection from or resistance to external forces
• containment restricts the movement of whatever is in the container
• as a result, whatever is contained has a relatively fixed location – it is in the container
• the object in the container may be either visible or invisible to an observer
• containment is transitive (see 5.1.2.). If A is in B, and C is in A, then C is also in B.
Another important image schema is PATH:
This image schema consists of a source point (A), an end point (B), and a relation between them, which we can think of as a force moving from A to B. Johnson claims that a structure like this underlies the understanding of such diverse events as walking from one place to another, throwing a ball to someone, hitting someone and giving someone a present. All these situations are understood, he claims, as consisting of the same basic parts and relations.
The CONTAINMENT and PATH schemas can be used to understand the behaviour of prepositions like out. Typically, Johnson notes, out has been taken to show a large variety of unrelated meanings, some of which are exemplified in (1):
(1a), for example, might be taken to exemplify a ‘physical motion’ sense, (1b) and (1c) a literal and metaphorical ‘expulsion’ sense respectively, (1d) a ‘choice’ sense, and (1e) a ‘removal from sensory field’ sense. However, following Lindner (1983), Johnson claims that the meaning of out in all the examples in (1) can be understood as relating to a combination of the path and containment image schemas. Figure 7.5 is Johnson’s diagrammatic representation of the meanings involved in (1):
This scene involves an object labelled TR (trajector) moving along a path from a position of containment within a bounded entity marked LM (landmark). (‘Trajector’ and ‘landmark’ are alternative names for figure and ground respectively; the trajector/figure is ‘a moving or conceptually movable object whose path or site is at issue’; the landmark/ground is ‘a reference-frame, or a reference-point stationary within a reference-frame, with respect to which the Figure’s path or site is characterized’ (Talmy 1985: 61).) The claim is that this single structure underlies the diverse uses of out in (1). The out of (1a), for example, obviously fits this diagram: in (1a), John is the trajector, and the room is the landmark. But it can also, Johnson claimed, be seen as underlying (1d) and (1e), apparently unrelated usages. In (1d) the trajector is ‘the best theory’, and the landmark is the set of theories from which it is being selected. Notice that this is not rep resented explicitly in the wording of (1d). But if we understand the meaning of out in this context by reference to the image schema of containment, as diagrammed above, a landmark is revealed as an inherent aspect of our understanding of the scene. Sentence (1d) thus represents a metaphorical application of the schemas, in which choice is assimilated to the pattern of containment and motion. Sentence (1e) is also metaphorical, and the landmark is once again implicit: here the trajector is the music, which is made to leave an implicit region of audibility, the landmark. Drowning the music out involves bringing it out of a position of audibility into one of inaudibility.
The cases in (2) relate to the same image schemas of CONTAINMENT and PATH, but are understood in a slightly different way, as diagrammed in Figure 7.6:
Here the path and containment schemas relate somewhat differently. Instead of a single entity moving progressively further along a path from a container towards an end point, we have an entity whose outside edge progressively expands outwards from a position of containment. Unlike in the previous case, the area between the container and the edge of the trajector is taken up by a continuous quantity of the moving entity – think of the beans being poured from a tin onto a plate. Once again, a variety of apparently dissimilar forms is argued to correspond to a single image schematic structure.
QUESTION Consider the following passage (Johnson 1987: 30–31).
You wake out of a deep sleep and peer out from beneath the covers into your room. You gradually emerge out of your stupor, pull yourself out from under the covers, climb into your robe, stretch out your limbs, and walk in a daze out of the bedroom into the bathroom. You look in the mirror and see your face staring out at you. You reach into the medicine cabinet, take out the toothpaste, squeeze out some toothpaste, put the toothbrush into your mouth, brush your teeth in a hurry, and rinse out your mouth.
Can the uses of out here be described in the same way?
How might we describe the uses of in? The type of diagrammatic representation seen in the discussion of out has proved a popular means of indicating the different meanings of prepositions. This means of representation was developed principally by Langacker (1987) and Lakoff (1987). Here we will briefly give the flavour of an influential analysis of the preposition over by Brugman and Lakoff, as presented in Lakoff (1987: 416–461).
Lakoff distinguishes four basic senses of over, each of which receives a diagrammatic representation. The first is the one found in clauses like the plane is flying over the hill or the bullet passed over our heads, which Lakoff represents as in Figure 7.7.
The trajector (the plane/bullet) is conceived as on a path which passes above and across the landmark (the hill/heads). The diagram gives a concise abstract representation of the spatial configurations involved.
The second sense of over is the stative above sense, as found in the helicopter is hovering over the hill or the painting is over the fireplace. This is identical to schema 1, except that it lacks the path component:
A third sense of over is the covering sense, as in the blanket is over the bed. Here the trajector is at least two-dimensional, and extends across the edges of the landmark, as in Figure 7.9.
The final basic schema is the ‘reflexive’ schema, which occurs in such uses as turn the paper over or roll the log over. Here we have the object moving above and across itself, as illustrated in Figure 7.10.
Each of these four basic senses can be specialized to cover a range of subsenses. Consider the use of over in Sam walked over the hill. This is a specialization of schema 1, except that there is contact between the land mark (the hill) and the trajector (Sam). Similarly, Sam lives over the hill can be treated as an instance of schema 1, but with the path as understood, and a focus on the endpoint. Lakoff diagrams the image schema for this as follows:
To say that Sam lives over the hill is to evoke the image of a trajector (Sam) on one side of a landmark (the hill), and an imagined path which the trajector has taken in order to arrive there. This representation accounts for the fact that we use the same preposition for two quite different types of situation, by associating both situations with fundamentally the same trajector–landmark structure. Similarly, Lakoff proposes the image schema in Figure 7.12 to account for instances like I walked all over the hill:
This is a variation on the covering schema (Figure 7.9). Here, it is the path taken by the trajector which ends up covering the landmark.
QUESTION What are some of the advantages and problems of diagrammatic representations like these?
QUESTION Consider the following uses of over:
The ball landed over the wall.
The town is over the next hill.
Sam climbed over the wall.
Someone has stuck some cardboard over the hole in the ceiling.
Which image schematic sense of overdo they belong to? How easy is it to decide? Could any use ever belong to more than one sense?
