The Role of Linguistic Frequency Effects in Shaping Metaphorical Systems

The functionalist view of language has arisen from analysis of the effect ofrepetition on the storage and processing of language at a variety of levels oflinguistic structure. Applied to metaphor, the approach places metaphoricalconventionalization at the center of our understanding of metaphor, explainingseveral important aspects of metaphorical systems (their internal systematicity, the gradedness of metaphor, the idiosyncracy of conventionalized metaphorical narratives, and others) as arising from the cumulative effect, over time, offrequency effects at the level of both conceptual mappings and utterances. Ray Gibbs has argued that such a view of metaphor ignores the essentialcontribution to our understanding of metaphorical systems that comes fromsemantic factors, and above all else the nature of metaphor as following from embodied cognition. In this article, I respond to several of Gibbs’ majorobjections to Emergent Metaphor Theory. In response to these concerns, I take the position that embodiment and other cognitive factors must indeedbe included in a full accounting of metaphor. I argue that a frequency-basedaccount of metaphor is fully compatible with semantic factors, and moreoverthat the aspects of metaphorry which follow from frequency effects are essential,defiing attributes of metaphorical systems.