ABSTRACT
The embodiment of complex knowledge transpires through a number of processes that implicate different aspects of our corporeality. These actually overlap in many ways by which sensate experiences are transformed into ideational dimensions: bodily parts, spatial orientation, internal sensations, sensory perceptions, and bodily management. It is as though the ability to comprehend experience through metaphor were a sense, like seeing or touching or hearing, with metaphors providing the only ways to perceive and experience much of the world 'objectivism' is the intellectual paradigm that posits knowledge as transcendental, beyond the physical limitations of the human organism, and existing independent of bodily experiences. This chapter examines how symbols work their magic throughout society by examining the relation between the sensate and ideational aspects of symbols. It considers the sociolinguistic practices of aisatsu in Japan, which is 'something done through the entire body'.
