Embodied Experience

Roles: body, sensation, movement, orientation, boundary, sufferer, symptom, cause

The lived experience of having a body — sensation, proprioception, gravity, fatigue, pain, pleasure. Lakoff and Johnson’s foundational claim: abstract thought is grounded in embodied experience. We understand UP IS GOOD because standing upright is healthy; we understand KNOWING IS SEEING because vision is our dominant sense. One of the most productive source domains in all of metaphor.

As Source Frame (40)

• A Force Is a Moving Object → physics
• Action Is Motion → event-structure
• Big Ball of Mud → software-programs
• Bus Factor → shared-resources
• Causes Are Forces → causal-reasoning
• Change Is Motion → event-structure
• Code Smell → software-programs
• Coherent Is Whole → intellectual-inquiry
• Conscious Is Up; Unconscious Is Down → mental-experience
• Difficulties Are Impediments to Motion → event-structure
• Emotional Stability Is Balance → mental-experience
• Finished Is Up → time-and-temporality
• Foreseeable Future Events Are Up (and Ahead) → time-and-temporality
• Good Is Up; Bad Is Down → embodied-experience
• Happy Is Up; Sad Is Down → embodied-experience
• Having Control Is Up; Being Subject To Control Is Down → social-behavior
• Health Is Up; Sickness Is Down → embodied-experience
• Ideas Are Objects → intellectual-inquiry
• Inflation Is an Entity → economics
• Love Is a Physical Force → love-and-relationships
• Love Is a Unity → love-and-relationships
• Love Is Madness → love-and-relationships
• Memory Stack → memory-management
• More Is Up; Less Is Down → embodied-experience
• Obligations Are Forces → event-structure
• Program Failure Is Bodily Failure → software-programs
• Properties Are Possessions → event-structure
• Psychological Forces Are Physical Forces → mental-experience
• Rational Is Up; Emotional Is Down → intellectual-inquiry
• Seeing Is Touching → vision
• Significant Is Big → social-behavior
• Software Rot → software-programs
• Status Is Up; Lack Of Status Is Down → social-roles
• The Conduit Metaphor → intellectual-inquiry
• The Mind Is A Brittle Object → mental-experience
• The Visual Field Is A Bounded Region → vision
• Time Is a Moving Object → time-and-temporality
• Time Is Stationary and We Move Through It → time-and-temporality
• Unknown Is Up; Known Is Down → intellectual-inquiry
• Virtue Is Up; Depravity Is Down → social-behavior

As Target Frame (4)

• embodied-experience → Good Is Up; Bad Is Down
• embodied-experience → Happy Is Up; Sad Is Down
• embodied-experience → Health Is Up; Sickness Is Down
• embodied-experience → More Is Up; Less Is Down