SYNESTHETIC METAPHORS IN THE PERSPECTIVE OF COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS. A CASE OF VLADIMIR NABOKOV’S METAPHORS
SYNESTHETIC METAPHORS IN THE PERSPECTIVE OF COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS. A CASE OF VLADIMIR NABOKOV’S METAPHORS

Summary/Abstract: Linguistic synesthesia and perceptual synesthesia are two distinct phenomena. This paper attempted to show different ways of analyzing the two dimensions of merging of the senses. The specificity of perceptual synesthesia, however, has led scholars to link it with the idea of metaphor (Ramachandran – Hubbard 2001). On the neurological level, synesthesia is caused by an additional crosswiring (cross-talk) between normally unrelated brain areas (in the case of grapheme-color synesthesia, V4 and grapheme area adjacent to it in the fusiform gyrus; Ramachandran – Brang 2008). Such extra linkage between brain areas accounts for the experience of color (when stimulated with graphemes or tones) in grapheme and tone-synesthesia. A similar mechanism of joining two seemingly unrelated things takes place in forming a metaphor. This correlation may explain the fact that the incidence of synesthesia is reported to be higher in artists (Mulvena 2007). Bearing these facts in mind, it can be concluded that indeed synesthesia, thanks to being ‘‘the elusive interface between sensory and higher-level conceptual processes, (...) might provoke a valuable experimental level for probing higher level thought processes (such as metaphor and language)” (Ramachandran – Brang 2008: 392). Illustrations of such probings were presented in the section on the perceptual nature of synesthesia. As for the relation between language and synesthesia, undoubtedly some connections have to exist, considering the fact that production and processing of each linguistic unit is inextricably linked to the activation of the relevant neural circuits. Nonetheless, what we see in language, particularly in synesthetic linguistic expressions such as loud color, has to be separated from what we know about neural activation in perceptual synesthesia. That is the case because there exists no direct causal relation between the two, i.e. between perceptual synesthesia and linguistic synesthesia. Having said that, the role of synesthesia in cognitive studies need not be depreciated. Blending of the senses on the neurological level, especially in grapheme- and tone-color synesthetes, provides some new routes of research for psycholinguists. On the linguistic level, synesthetic metaphors illustrate how deeply-rooted cognitive motivation is. This is exhibited by the opposite directions of metaphorical mappings in adjective-noun pairings on the one hand, and verb extensions on the other hand. Cognitive motivation shows that whether the metaphorical mappings are upward or downward is by no means accidental in synesthetic extensions. In this respect linguistic synesthesia provides an intriguing illustration of the embodiment of linguistic meaning.

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