Levels of metaphor in gesture

Abstract

The present contribution integrates a recent, multilevel approach to metaphor advanced by Kövecses (2017 and later publications), with gestures as a mode of metaphorical expression. In doing so, the paper shows how different elements of conceptual structure, varying from the abstract, recurring image schema, through more complex conceptual domains and frames, to contextually embedded and variable metaphorical scenarios, participate in the metaphoricity of gestures. This application of gestures to the multilevel approach lends direct support to the idea that human conceptual system recruits various semiotic modes – not limited to language – for expressing its content. Image schemas of object and source-path-goal have been shown to participate directly in the domain of transfer, which, when embedded in context of a given communicative situation, has become the conceptual frame of coming out. The frame, when realised via different gestural forms in a shared context across many speakers, turns into a highly context-sensitive, variable, and speech co-expressive gestural metaphorical scenario of coming out is showing an object.