Gestural metaphorical scenarios and coming out narratives

This article extends the framework of metaphorical scenarios proposed by Musolff (2006, 2016) by adding a gestural component. Coming out videos, serving as the source of data for the present analysis, help to uncover the conceptual mechanisms that shape the understanding and conceptualisation of this phenomenon. The extended framework of gestural metaphorical scenarios reveals that conceptual metaphors create cognitively and communicatively coherent wholes that are expressed multimodally, via speech and gesture. The article proposes that coming out, a highly individualised process, is conceptualised at various levels by both generic and specific metaphors. The analysis shows that metaphorical variation is present not only at the level of lexical scenarios, but also at the level of gesture, giving rise to multimodal discourse fragments. The extended framework, therefore, might be useful in analysing multimodal discourse.