The Way Verbs of Perception Play a Role in the Poems by the Blind
The Way Verbs of Perception Play a Role in the Poems by the Blind

Author(s): Elmira Esmaeelpour, Farhad Sasani
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies, Cognitive linguistics
Published by: Scientia Moralitas Research Institute
Keywords: blind; metaphor; perception verb; vision;
Summary/Abstract: Due to the importance of vision in human perception, different verbal behaviors are expected in the congenitally blind individuals and the sighted ones. Therefore, in this research, two groups of poets (the congenitally blind and control group of the sighted) were found to explore how differently they represent their perception of the five predominant senses. Strikingly, the statistical results show that the frequency of verbs of vision are not only significantly high but also are more frequent than the same verbs in the poems of the sighted. This might be explained through the fact that perception is reflected and codified in language. Thus, the blind can perceive visual phenomena through language however they are congenitally blind. The second qualitative experiment shows that these blind people use different visual metaphors more than the sighted. This might prove Halliday and Mathiessen’s belief that conceptual structure and semantic structure are just different metaphors of one thing.

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