AsummaryofJohnsonsarticle:TheEmergenceofMeaningthroughSchematicStructure

I would like to give a summary of imageschematic structures and their operation based on
JohnsonsarticleTheEmergenceofMeaningthroughSchematicStructure.
Johnson argues that these structures are the central elements of meaning, while the Objectivist
approach to meaning is too narrow, because it excludes nonpropositional structures that are
necessary for meaningful comprehension. Hestartsoutwithdefiningthetermschema,hesays
that he takes the original meaning into account proposed by Kant, not todays popular
conception. He lists severaldefinitionsofthetermfromdifferentperspectivesnonpropositional
structures of imagination (Kant), general structures of knowledge (modernist) part of the
perceptual cycle and modified by experience (psychological) and part of the nervous system
(biological). Finally, he arrives to give his own: embodied patterns of meaningfully organized
experience.
Next, he describes a typical schematic structure through an example, that is a typical schemata
for physical containment. He says that there are five important entailments or consequences of
this structure: 1. protection from external forces 2. limiting forces within container 3. object
gets fixity of location 4. accessible or inaccessible for observer 5. transitivity of containment.
According to Lakoff and Johnson metaphorical entailments are theimpartingof acharacteristic
ofthesourcedomaintothetargetdomain.
Johnson also states that image schemata are not propositional, because their natural operations
and transformations cannot be accounted for inthatviewtheyratherexistincontinuous fashion
in ourunderstanding.Healsomakesthedistinctionbetweenimageschemataandmentalpictures
arguing that former are structures that organize mental representations. He revisits Kant again
who argued that mental images only refer tooneparticularobject, butnota conceptofthegiven
object. For example a picture of a chair cannot refer to all chairs, the concept is not stored by
pictures, but in relation to other things. He refers to Andersons differentiation between image
schemata and mental pictures. Image schemata are abstract and not onlyavisualrepresentation.
Mental operations on them are rather viewedasabstractanalogsofphysicalprocesses,thesecan
takeplaceinasocalledmentalspacewherevisualrepresentationsarenotevennecessary.Image
schematransformationsindicatethatthesestructuresarealevelaboverichmentalimages.
Johnson gives a short summary of the propositional theory that is mental imagery is merely an
epiphenomenon of underlying propositional representations and says that it denies independent
mental reality to imagery. He claims that while mental scenes and relationships can be
represented with arbitrary symbols, imageschematic transformations are natural,theycannotbe
accountedforwiththepropositionalview.

Next, he describes features of image schemata he says they consist of parts (people, places,
events, states) and relations (causal relations, temporal sequences, partwhole patterns, relative
locations).They are dynamic and should be understood as structures of activity, thus, they are
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flexible. They operate on a level of mental representation between propositional structures and
particular concrete images. He gives his two definitions: 1. Image schemata are recurrent
patterns, shapes, regularities in or of ongoing ordering activities. 2. Image schemata are
continuous structures ofanorganizingactivity.Imageschematadonotgetfilled inbyperceptual
details,theyaremalleableandcanbemodifiedtofitsimilarsituations.
Next, he describes a nonpropositional schemata for Inout orientation as an example for
metaphorical extension. He argues that some of the sensesinvolvephysicalorientationinspace,
but some do not, they are basically connected to bodily experience, but become extended
metaphorically for example in the sentence Back out of an agreement. Such complex structures
are the basis of human reasoning and drawing inferences. He uses the containment schema and
its inferentialstructuretoexplaintheconceptofmetaphorical mapping. Healsoexplainsthenew
theory of cognitive grammar which denies thatthereareautonomous languagemechanismsand
that language is independent of cognition. It claims that we have general cognitive and
experiential mechanism that can be specified to language tasks. Lindners study ofverbparticle
constructions identified three basic image schemata from altogether 600cases,referringtothem
asprototypicalschematicstructures.
Then, he suggests that image schemata constrain inferences, because they have definite internal
structures which can be extended figuratively. Inferential patterns in the containment schema,
likesomethingcanbeeitherinoroutofthecontainer,transitivity(ifAisinBandBisinC,then
A is in C) and the nature of negation (if A means inthebox,notAmeansoutsidethebox)arise
from our bodily experience of containment these inferential structures are preserved by
metaphoricalmapping.