Image Schemas

Interpretation of use of the ladder symbol, then other examples, show how cognitive science aligns with theological analyses. Cognitive science and theology both claim a legitimate basis for approaching the material world through the human body and mind. Cognitive science, by following ‘correct’ understandings of God’s nature, undermines notions that objectivity formed the basis for the development of science. Western people’s extra-rational determination to hang-on to intellectually defunct Cartesian dualism explains much contemporary theological confusion. Global English use, and active countering of racism, undergird defunct philosophies in the West. Christian theology promotes human well-being. Image schemas designing user-interfaces demonstrate God’s obscurity.

Image schemas and primary metaphors have been studied extensively in cognitive linguistics, but insufficiently in the applied context of human-computer interaction. Scant evidence proposes image schemas and primary metaphors as sources for intuitive interface design. Literature on concept formation, however, suggests that image schemas occurring earlier in infancy exert greater influence than later developed image schemas on the development of thought and language. To investigate the impact of developmental origin of image schemas on the validity of image-schematic metaphors in supporting intuitive interface design, two studies analyzed metaphor strengths of image schemas from questionnaire, and from gesture and touch interaction with a 2D interactive interface. Responses linked to primary metaphors associated with early image schemas demonstrated greater agreement rates compared to late image schemas. Whilst questionnaire and touch responses generally demonstrated metaphor strengths well above chance level, gesture responses were only above chance level for early but not for late image schemas. For the application of image-schematic metaphors in intuitive interfaces, the current findings suggest two restrictions: First, primary metaphors linked to early image schemas appear to be more intuitive than those linked to late image schemas. This impact of developmental occurrence of image schemas is interpreted in terms of differences in complexity and frequency. Second, image-schematic primary metaphors appear more suited for providing intuitive touch interaction experiences. For intuitive gesture interaction experiences, they appear less suited.

This book examines the origin, content, and development of the musical thought of Heinrich Schenker and Arnold Schoenberg. One of the premises is that Schenker’s and Schoenberg’s inner musical lives are inseparable from their inner spiritual lives. Curiously, Schenker and Schoenberg start out in much the same musical-spiritual place, yet musically they split while spiritually they grow closer. The reception of Schenker’s and Schoenberg’s work has sidestepped this paradox of commonality and conflict, instead choosing to universalize and amplify their conflict. Bringing to light a trove of unpublished material, I argue that Schenker’s and Schoenberg’s conflict is a reflection of tensions within their musical and spiritual ideas. They share a particular conception of the tone as an ideal sound realized in the spiritual eye of the genius. The tensions inherent in this largely psychological and material notion of the tone and this largely metaphysical notion of the genius shape both their musical divergence on the logical (technical) level in theory and composition, including their advocacy of the Ursatz versus twelve-tone composition, and their spiritual convergence, including their embrace of Judaism. These findings shed new light on the musical and philosophical worlds of Schenker and Schoenberg and on the profound artistic and spiritual questions with which they grapple.

The origin, structure, and consequences of Heinrich Schenker’s and Arnold Schoenberg’s conception of the genius are not obvious, but previous studies have addressed this conception only obliquely. Aided by my study of Schenker’s papers in the Oswald Jonas Memorial Collection, I demonstrate through a close reading of Schenker’s and Schoenberg’s published and unpublished writings informed by conceptual metaphor theory and conceptual blending theory that Schenker and Schoenberg from about the time of their Harmonielehren onward both conceive of the genius as that perfect artist who in and through the act of improvisatory composition realizes the tone (an ideal sound), attains self-realization, and points the way to an elusive realization of mankind, a conception which draws on and develops those of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Arthur Schopenhauer, and which is tied together by the figure of vision and, appropriately enough, certain recurring image schemas, but also inadvertently by the figure of blindness. Schenker’s and Schoenberg’s divergent musical developments and their parallel, individualistic confessions of Judaism in the 1920s are both linked to this conception. Included are discussions of Immanuel Kant, the unconscious, morphology, the musical idea, tonality, painting, morality, God, and the Bilderverbot.

Arnold Schoenberg's curious ascription of dissonance to the six-three chord in his Harmonielehre reveals the positing of a unity of tonal and non-tonal music in their solving of problems of unrest in the tone, the dissonance, and the musical idea, but neither his fragmentary theoretical writings nor his interpreters have fleshed this connection out. On the contrary, the notion has arisen of a " tonal problem " as a distinguishing feature of tonal music. Drawing on blending theory and metaphor theory, I elucidate this unity by explaining Schoenberg's dialectical conceptions of the tone, the means of art (made up of consonances and dissonances), the musical work (as a presentation of the musical idea), and the evolution of perception and music and by supplementing Schoenberg's analysis of the first movement of Johannes Brahms's Piano Quartet No. 3 in C minor, op. 60. These findings shed new light on Schoenberg's and indeed on Brahms's musical thought.

Schenker’s concept of interruption remains a matter of division among music theorists. Peter H. Smith’s suggestion that Schenker’s concept of interruption reflects his valuation of linear evolution is true, but this valuation is only part of the story. A close reading of Schenker’s theoretical writings informed in the end by blending theory and metaphor theory demonstrates that Schenker is equally committed to both harmonic-linear unity and melodic-formal repetition as expressions of tonal life, and that interruption, which involves a dual articulation of the one Ursatz, caps a sustained effort to theorize the integration of unity and repetition. Schenker’s quest to reconcile form and harmony begins with the concept of the perfect authentic cadence, which he theorizes in Harmonielehre. Schenker subsequently develops the notion of harmonic unity through the concepts of consonance and dissonance, and he attempts to wed harmonic unity and formal repetition through the concept of the Urlinie. In the final stage of his theoretical career, Schenker arrives at the concept of interruption, which not only finally integrates formal repetition and harmonic unity but does so in a way that recuperates aspects of the tone not captured by these principles in themselves.

According to embodied realism theory developed by Lakoff & Johnson (1980, 1999), image schemas, which constitute primary representations of bodily experience, are responsible for the structuring of the conseptual system in the human mind. Although various scholars suggest and analyse several image schemas, the question that remains is whether some image schemas are more substantial than others (Oakley, 2007: chap. 5), or, better, whether there is a single image schema from which all the others derive.

In this project, having embodied realism as my starting point (while keeping a critical eye on it), I attempt to answer the above question. My basic assumption is that consciousness is the primary image schema, upon which conceptualization is structured. In order to examine this assumption, I consider various theories of consciousness, Mikhail Bakhtin's philosophical ideas regarding consciousness and language, as well as Jacques Lacan's psychoanalytic views on the mirror stage and the construction of subjectivity. In addition, I take into account findings coming from research in cognitive and developmental psychology, as well as in neuroscience. The conclusions of this study is summarised into a suggested model, which essentially attempts to shed light on the ancient issue of concept ontogenesis and the overall structure of conceptualization.

Kant posits the schema as a hybrid bridging the generality of pure concepts and the particularity of sensible intuitions. However, I argue that countenancing such schemata leads to a third-man regress. Siding with those who think that the midway posit of the Critique of Pure Reason's schematism section is untenable, my diagnosis is that Kant's transcendental inquiry goes awry because it attempts to analyze a form/matter union that is primitive. I therefore sketch a nonrepresentational stance aimed at respecting this primitivity.

The article analyzes a Turkish fairy tale (The Stag-Prince) of the ATU 450 Brother and Sister tale-type via the CENTER-PERIPHERY image schema and certain related conceptual metaphors. It is demonstrated that the CENTER-PERIPHERY image schema (and respective conceptual metaphors) constructs the space and basic meaning of the fairy tale. Also, a parallel has been made between the realization of the CENTER-PERIPHERY image schema in the tale and the socio-political reality of the Ottoman Empire, the center-periphery polity model in particular.

With the advent of the "multimodal turn" in metaphor research (Forceville 1996, Cienki 1998), it has become evident that the PATH schema (Johnson 1987), either alone or as a part of an image schema complex (Cienki 1997), is commonly evoked to provide structuring for metaphorical rendering of abstract concepts in multimodal discourse, including verbo-gestural communication (Kolter et al. 2012) and verbo-visuals, such as advertisements (Yu 2009), comics (Potsch and Williams 2012), documentaries (Forceville 2006, 2011), and animation films (Forceville and Jeulink 2011; Forceville 2013a, b, 2016). Revealing that metaphor, as a conceptual mechanism, has its manifestations not only in the verbal mode, but also in other modalities, studies of this kind break the circular "language-thought-language" argumentation that was common in Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff and Johnson 1980, 1999) and, eventually, has become the object of both criticism and common concern (Gibbs and Colston 1995).
In this case study I focus on the PATH schema in verbo-pictorial aphorisms on LIFE, taking as my data sample a number of cartoons by Janusz Kapusta, a Polish artist. The analysed verbo-pictorial aphorisms are all based on conventional metaphors, and their creative reworking in either one mode or the two modes in combination, accounts for their novelty and makes the communicative acts more memorable. In more general terms, this study provides further support to the dynamic theory of metaphor (Müller 2008), since it makes it apparent that the degree of overlap of the elements cued in the two modes varies considerably and, by the same token, activation levels of metaphoric source and target domains turn out to be gradable and dynamic. It is argued also that the novelty of the mapping should be included among the factors that may increase the metaphor's activation level.

This paper examines two cultural texts, Philip Roth’s "Nemesis" and Ridley Scott’s "Alien", based on cognitive linguistic approaches to figurative language in communication, cognitive metaphor theory and its pragmalinguistic applications. It explores how far very similar image schemas are functionally employed across modes and genres to communicate a certain affect, in this case horror, to a global, culturally diverse audience. The results are put into the perspective of ongoing debates about the universality and variation of metaphors and image schemas across types of texts and, in extrapolation, across cultures. The paper aims to contribute to discussions about the functions and modalities of intercultural transfers of literature and popular culture, combining the cognitive, the linguistic and the cultural dimension of literary texts communicating across cultures.

As compared to their purely verbal manifestations, multimodal realizations of image schematic metaphors have received far too little attention in cognitive linguistics than they would deserve. It will be argued that image schemas (Johnson 1987, Talmy 1988), since they are skeletal conceptual structure, afford an excellent source domain for metaphors that are realized verbo-visually in cartoons. The cartoons selected for this study are all by Janusz Kapusta, a Polish artist, whose works have appeared every week in the Polish magazine " Plus-Minus " for over ten years. In contrast to the gestural medium, films and music, where the relevant elements of image schematic source domains of metaphor are never fully available at once, the cartoons give a " snapshot " of a conceptual image which is ready for inspection as a single Gestalt. They are therefore a good testing ground for discussing the question of how the visual and the verbal modality interact in spatialization of abstract ideas. Providing insights into the function of multimodal metaphors and levels of their activation, the discussion contributes to the ongoing debate on the conceptual nature of metaphor and the embodiment of meaning. The results of the study are also considered in relation to the role of verbo-pictorial metaphor in structuring abstract concepts in a creative way.