Metaphorizing as Embodied Interactivity: What Gesturing and Film Viewing Can Tell Us About an Ecological View on Metaphor

Abstract

ABSTRACT Ecological-cognition approaches share the overall assumption that cognition is enacted, extended, embedded, and embodied. In this article, these basic assumptions are illustrated and critically evaluated from the point of view of gesture and film studies. In a theoretical introduction, the idea of metaphorizing as embodied interactivity is developed and connected with these basic assumptions of an ecological cognition approach to metaphor. Four case studies illustrate how metaphoricity in face-to-face contexts and in film viewing is enacted, extended, embedded, and embodied. Examples from gesturing face-to-face and a case study of a television news report serve to illustrate how metaphors in these ecologies have important common characteristics: they emerge from metaphorizing as embodied interactivity.