Thread:User talk:WaitingforGodot/Thinking in pictures/reply (4)

The WP article is a pretty good intro: "In contemporary cognitive linguistics, an image schema is considered an embodied prelinguistic structure of experience that motivates conceptual metaphor mappings."

In case anybody didn't know, I have this huge infatuation with cognitive linguistics, along with its influence on philosophy. For about fifteen or twenty years I've realized that I don't think so much in words, nor even pictures, but more in terms of what I have called images. Lakoff's Women, Fire and Dangerous Things was an eye-opener for me, about five years ago; I found it reassuring not to be alone in this. Lakoff and Johnson and their ilk have catalogued a lot of these image schemas. (linky)