Imagery underlying metaphors: A cognitive study of a multimodal discourse of yoga classes

ABSTRACT The article presents an analysis of metaphorical names for yoga postures (called asanas) as well as other verbal and verbo-gestural means of communication used by yoga teachers to describe these complex bodily postures. The difficulty of describing the intricacies of subjective bodily experience has been noted in the previous studies which, for example, deal with the metaphorical language, who analyze the metaphorical language and metaphorical gestures used by dance teachers to convey information about the subjective experience of bodily balance while dancing tango and ballet. A common feature of all the metaphors discussed in the present paper is mental imagery, which is mapped from source to target. The study shows firstly that metaphor is an important didactic tool used by yoga teachers to instruct practitioners about complicated postures; secondly, that the images permeating verbal and verbo-gestural metaphors used for didactic purposes during a yoga class are a mixture of static, dynamic and image-schematic elements. It is assumed that these are mainly image schemas underlying source and target domains of metaphors used in yoga discourse that allow for the conveyance of information on the intricacies and logic of asanas.