Figurativity: the complex link between words and things

Abstract

This article deals with the concept of figurativity within the cognitive studies of language. It presents the polarization, inherited from the ancient Greeks, between what is conventionalized as figurative and as literal, which resulted in the understanding that thought and language are inherently literal. In this conception, figurativity would be an unnatural feature intentionally used as a stylistic strategy. Thus, the use of figurativity became associated with damages to the supposed transparency of language and the meanings inherent to it. Although this view has not been supplanted, contemporary cognitive perspectives that treat the linguistic phenomenon as intrinsic to cognition offer us another view on figurativity. In particular, the Neural Theory of Language has both theoretically and empirically reinforced the understanding of the cognitive mechanisms involved in the construction of meaning. Equally important, this theoretical framework has presented evidence that body experiences are at the basis of the construction of mental structures evidenced in the use of language, so that the peculiar nature of our body contributes to the peculiarities of our conceptual system. The integration between body and mind, so that emotions and abstractions must be conceptualized from more concrete body-based elements, offers new dimensions to the explanation for the linguistic phenomenon of figurativity.