Image schema

An image schema (both schemas and schemata are used as plural forms) is a recurring structure within our cognitive processes which establishes patterns of understanding and reasoning. As an understudy to embodied cognition, image schemas are formed from our bodily interactions, from linguistic experience, and from historical context. The term is introduced in Mark Johnson's book The Body in the Mind; in case study 2 of George Lakoff's Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: and further explained by Todd Oakley in The Oxford handbook of cognitive linguistics; by Rudolf Arnheim in Visual Thinking; by the collection From Perception to Meaning: Image Schemas in Cognitive Linguistics edited by Beate Hampe and Joseph E. Grady. In contemporary cognitive linguistics, an image schema is considered an embodied prelinguistic structure of experience that motivates conceptual metaphor mappings. Learned in early infancy they are often described as spatiotemporal relationships that enable actions and describe characteristics of the environment. They exist both as static and dynamic version, describing both states and processes, compare Containment vs. Going_In/Out, and they are learned from all sensorimodalities. Evidence for image schemas is drawn from a number of related disciplines, including work on cross-modal cognition in psychology, from spatial cognition in both linguistics and psychology, cognitive linguistics, and from neuroscience. The influences of image schemas is not only seen in cognitive linguistics and developmental psychology, but also in interface design and more recently, the theory has become of increased interest in artificial intelligence and cognitive robotics to help ground meaning.

Johnson: From image schemas to abstract reasoning via metaphor

Image schemas are dynamic embodied patterns—they take place in and through time. Moreover, they are multi-modal patterns of experience, not simply visual. For instance, consider how the dynamic nature of the containment schema is reflected in the various spatial senses of the English word out. Out may be used in cases where a clearly defined trajector (TR) leaves a spatially bounded landmark (LM), as in:

(1a) John went out of the room. (1b) Mary got out of the car. (1c) Spot jumped out of the pen. In the most prototypical of such cases the landmark is a clearly defined container. However, out may also be used to indicate those cases where the trajector is a mass that spreads out, effectively expanding the area of the containing landmark:

(2a) She poured out the beans. (2b) Roll out the carpet. (2c) Send out the troops. Finally, out is also often used to describe motion along a linear path where the containing landmark is implied and not defined at all:

(3) The train started out for Chicago. Experientially basic and primarily spatial image schemas such as the Containment schema and its derivatives the Out schemas lend their logic to non-spatial situations. For example, one may metaphorically use the term out to describe non-spatial experiences:

(4) Leave out that big log when you stack the firewood. (Schema used directly and non-metaphorically.) (4a) I don't want to leave any relevant data out of my argument. (Schema metaphorically projected onto argumentation.) (4b) Tell me your story again, and don't leave out any details. (Schema metaphorically projected onto story-telling.) (4c) She finally came out of her depression. (Schema metaphorically projected onto emotional life.) Johnson argues that more abstract reasoning is shaped by such underlying spatial patterns. For example, he notes that the logic of containment is not just a matter of being in or out of the container. For example, if someone is in a deep depression, we know it is likely to be a long time before they are well. The deeper the trajector is in the container, the longer it will take for the trajector to get out of it. Similarly, Johnson argues that transitivity and the law of the excluded middle in logic are underlaid by preconceptual embodied experiences of the Containment schema.

Lakoff: Image schemas in Brugman's The story of Over In case study two of his book Women, Fire and Dangerous Things, Lakoff re-presented the analysis of the English word over done by Claudia Brugman in her (1981) master's thesis. Similar to the analysis of out given by Johnson, Lakoff argued that there were six basic spatial schemas for the English word over. Moreover, Lakoff gave a detailed accounting of how these schemas were interrelated in terms of what he called a radial category structure. For example, these six schemas could be both further specified by other spatial schemas such as whether the trajector was in contact with the landmark or not (as in the plane flew over the mountain vs. he climbed over the mountain). Furthermore, Lakoff identified a group of "transformational" image schemata such as rotational schemas and path to object mass, as in Spider-Man climbed all over the wall. This analysis raised profound questions about how image schemas could be grouped, transformed, and how sequences of image schemas could be chained together in language, mind, and brain.

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