| Lemma | image schema |
|---|---|
| Categoria grammaticale | N |
| Lingua | inglese |
| Sigla | Lakoff (1987) |
| Titolo | Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things |
| Sinonimi | |
| Rinvii | |
| Traduzioni | |
| Citazioni | Since image schemas are common to all human beings, as are the principles that determine basic-level concepts, total relativism is ruled out, though limited relativism is permitted. The “basic logic” of image schemas is due to their configurations as gestalts-as structured wholes which are more than mere collections of parts. Their basic logic is a consequence of their configurations. This way of understanding image schema is irreducibly cognitive. It is rather different from the way of understanding logical structure that those of us raised with formal logic have grown to know and love. In formal logic there are no such gestalt configurations. Consider the concept of a MAN. It comes with a rich mental image, characterizing overall shape. But the mental image also comes with a schematic structure. [...]
In general, rich mental images are structured by image-schemas, but they are not exhaustively structured by them. The mental image is more than just the sum of the schemas. Since the mental image is part of what makes MAN a basic-level concept, the basic-level concept must contain schemas. If both basic-level concepts and image schemas are primitives, then we have the situation where one primitives contains other primitives. - Given basic-level and image-schematic concepts, it is possible to build up complex cognitive models.
- Image schemas provide the structures used in those models. I maintain that image schemas define most of what we commonly mean by the term “structure” when we talk about abstract domains. When we understand something as having an abstract structure, we understand that structure in terms of image schemas.[...]
Image schemas thus play two roles: They are concepts that have directly understood structures of their own, and they are used metaphorically to structure other complex concepts. Image schemas characterize conceptual structure. They also characterize syntactic structure. The existence of directly meaningful concepts-basic-level concepts and image schemas- provides certain fixed points in the objective evaluation of situations. The image-schematic structuring of bodily experience is, we hypothesize, the same for all human beings. Moreover, the principles determining basic-level structure are also universally valid. Image schemas, [...], each have a basic logic. Those schemas structure our preconceptual experience as functioning beings. And they appear to have all the logical structure that is needed to characterize rationality-without positing a transcendental rationality. Container schemas, for example, arise out of our bodily experience, and they have the basic logic of the syllogism. The syllogism can be viewed as arising out of our bodily experience and our capacity for metaphorical projection, rather than giving some transcendental existence. Kinesthetic image schemas are structured in such a way that they have a basic logic, and it is that structure that is used in reasoning and that give rise to mathematics. Kinesthetic image schemas are directly meaningful because they preconceptually structure our experience of functioning in space. They also have an internal basic logic that we believe is sufficient to characterize human reason. |