The cross-modal representation of metaphors

Abstract

This study investigates the habitual expressions of metaphors in language and gesture and the collaboration of these two modalities in conveying metaphors. This study examined 247 metaphoric expressions in Mandarin conversations. The data includes 110 (44.5%) metaphors being conveyed concurrently by speech and gesture as well as 137 (55.5%) metaphors being conveyed in gesture exclusively. Results show that Entity metaphor is the most frequent one expressed in daily conversations. The cooperation of language and gesture enables us to evaluate the various hypotheses of speech-gesture production. Results from this study tend to support the Interface Hypothesis, which suggests that gestures are generated from an interface representation between speaking and spatio-motoric thought.