ABSTRACT
Conceptual metaphor is one of the basic imaginative devices by which we employ spatial logics and grounded bodily meaning to understand concepts that are either more abstract or less well conceptually articulated. We reason on the basis of such metaphorical mappings, which let us use the inference patterns of the source domain to reason in the target domain. For example, basic metaphoric structures by which we experience and conceptualize mental phenomena in terms of bodily phenomena lie at the heart of our understanding of human cognition. They form a vast generic metaphoric system that Eve Sweetser has named the Mind As Body metaphor.28 A number of recent studies have focused on the fact that the vast majority of our conceptions of mind and reasoning are grounded on some bodily-based metaphor system. Our conceptions of mind,29 memory,30 knowledge,31 reason,32 and logic33 are all defined by imageschematically grounded metaphors.
