DOI 10.

1515/ip-2013-0014 Intercultural Pragmatics 2013; 10(2): 315 – 339

Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano
The relationship between conceptual
metaphor and culture*
Abstract: This paper discusses the role that culture plays in the configuration
of one of the most crucial meaning mechanisms in cognitive linguistics, namely
conceptual metaphors, which are defined as mappings between two different
conceptual domains. These mappings are embodied, that is, grounded in our
­sensorimotor, cultural, and social experience of the world around us. This paper
argues that culture is a key concept for the explanation of how conceptual meta-
phors emerge from our knowledge structures. It proposes the need of a culture
sieve that manipulates culture elements in two ways. On the one hand, it “filters”
those elements that are in accordance with the premises of a given culture, and
on the other, it “impregnates” the mapping with touches of a culture in contrast
with other cultural and social systems. The paper is divided in two main parts:
First, an overview of the relationship between metaphor, embodiment and cul-
ture in cognitive linguistics is provided. Second, the importance of the culture
sieve is illustrated with two case studies from two popular conceptual domains in
metaphor studies: perception and body-parts.

Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano: iraide@unizar.es

1 C
 ognitive linguistics, metaphor, embodiment,
and culture
Cognitive linguistics is a usage-based approach to the study of language, which
views linguistic knowledge as part of general cognition; linguistic behavior is not
separated from other general cognitive abilities that allow mental processes such
as reasoning, memory, attention, or learning, but understood as an integral part
of it. Although it is not a homogeneous and unified approach since it embraces
different subapproaches, all cognitive linguists agree on certain theoretical and
empirical tenets. In a nutshell, language is symbolic in nature, embodied and
situated in the surrounding world experiences, and not an autonomous faculty

* This research is supported by Grant FFI2010-14903 from the Spanish Ministry of Science and
Innovation. I would like to thank the editors for the infinite patience. Oinatzentzat.
316 Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano

(see Evans and Green 2006; Cuyckens and Geeraerts 2007 for a comprehen-
sive ­description; see Ibarretxe-Antuñano and Valenzuela 2012 for a review in
Spanish).
Authors such as Geeraerts (2011) have argued that what really makes cogni-
tive linguistics different from other approaches, and probably its main contribu-
tion to general linguistics, is that this model brings context back to linguistic
analysis. After a period of decontextualization in structural and generative lin-
guistics, Geeraerts states that cognitive linguistics pays special attention to four
elements of context: the lexicon, discourse and use, meaning, and the social con-
text. This paper is concerned with the last two elements. Meaning is understood
in terms of conceptualization; it is encyclopedic and grounded in experience.
­Social context, on the other hand, refers to the social and cultural nature of lan-
guage and its relationship with situated cognition, variation within and among
languages and cultures, and discourse.
Meaning (i.e., grounded in experience conceptualization) and social context
(i.e., social and cultural background) are two of the basic ingredients that come
into play in one of the most well-known and popular cognitive tools, namely con-
ceptual metaphor. This is traditionally defined within cognitive linguistics as a
mapping between two conceptual domains, where properties from one domain
(the source) are transferred onto another domain (the target). A classic example
is the metaphor love is a journey, where our knowledge about journeys allows
us to conceptualize love. Here, a systematic web of conceptual correspondences
between the two domains is established: The lovers are seen as the travelers, the
love story as the journey, the problems in the relationship as bumps in the road,
etc. This example illustrates the claim that conceptual metaphor helps us struc-
turing and understanding our conceptual systems (Lakoff and Johnson 1980: 5),
and therefore, conceptual metaphors are meaning mechanisms.
Another basic idea in conceptual metaphor theory is that metaphors are not
arbitrary, but grounded in our experience with the world around us. As Lakoff
and Johnson put it when talking about structural and ontological metaphors,
­respectively: “[. . .] no metaphor can ever be comprehended or even adequately
represented independently of its experiential basis [. . .] [They] are grounded by
virtue of systematic correlates within our experience” (1980: 19, 58). These au-
thors provided a number of examples that illustrate the grounding of metaphors.
For instance, the basis for the metaphor more is up (less is down) as in My
­income rose last year, If you’re too hot, turn the heat down, is the correlation
­between piling up objects with verticality. In the case of the metaphor rational
is up (emotional is down), the basis that Lakoff and Johnson propose is both
physical and cultural since people, in Western culture, see themselves as being
situated above anybody else (animals, plants, and physical environment).
 Conceptual metaphor and culture 317

What Lakoff and Johnson claim is that the experiential basis of conceptual
metaphors is embodied, that is, based on our interaction with the physical,
­social, and cultural dimensions of the world around us (see also Johnson 1987,
1997). In short, embodiment comprises both the sensorimotor and the socio-
cultural­sides.
Judging from what has been mentioned so far, the role of culture in cognitive
linguistics in general, and in conceptual metaphor in particular, should be clear
and obvious: It is a key concept. In fact, the word “culture” can be found in
the first writings related to conceptual metaphor theory. When talking about the
­experiential grounding of metaphors, Lakoff and Johnson (1980: 57) already
pointed out that

[. . .] every experience takes place within a vast background of cultural presuppositions [. . .]

Cultural assumptions, values, and attitudes are not a conceptual overlay which we may or
may not place upon experience as we choose. It would be more correct to say that all experi-
ence is cultural through and through, that we experience our “world” in such a way that our
culture is already present in the very experience itself.

However, the truth is more complex. Despite this initial prominent role of
culture in conceptual metaphor theory, both the function and the importance of
culture in this framework have been interpreted in different ways. In what fol-
lows, I will offer a concise overview of the relationship between conceptual meta-
phor and culture in some of the most influential writings in cognitive linguistics.
This overview is crucial since culture and metaphor have undergone different
phases over the years in this framework. In fact, there are three critical issues to
bear in mind: (i) the chronological evolution of the importance of culture in meta-
phor, (ii) the definition of culture, and (iii) the function and role of culture. Once
this theoretical background has been provided, the second part of this paper
­argues in favor of bringing back culture to the foreground and to the place it
­occupied before. Here, it is argued that any analysis that tries to describe the con-
ceptual basis of metaphor has to account not only for its bodily-based grounding
but also for its cultural background.

1.1 C
 hronological description of culture in conceptual
metaphor theory

The relationship between metaphor and culture has undergone different stages in
cognitive linguistic research: from a “normalized” situation in which both con-
cepts are considered crucial and inseparable over a period of “culture oblivion” to
318 Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano

a “culture renaissance” in current research. Although the dates are approximate,

and there have always been exceptions to the rule,1 one can say that from the ’80s
up to the mid-’90s, culture is treated as any other necessary ingredient in meta-
phor theory.
As just shown, Lakoff and Johnson (1980) recognized the intimate relation-
ship between conceptualization and culture. Experience cannot be disassociated
from culture, and therefore, every conceptual metaphor carries a cultural load.
Johnson, some years later, in his famous book The body in the mind insisted on
the interaction between “a human organism with its environment (which in-
cludes its language, cultural traditions, values, institutions, and the history of its
social community)” (Johnson 1987: 209). In other words, culture is a key element
in the notion of embodiment in these early days.
Culture assumes a leading role in cognitive linguistics in this period. It is the
time of so-called cultural models. Holland and Quinn’s (1987) edited volume is a
blueprint for this type of study. These authors established that

cultural models are a presupposed, taken-for-granted models of the world that are widely
shared (although not necessarily to the exclusion of other, alternative models) by the mem-
bers of a society and that play an enormous role in their understanding of that world and
their behaviour in it. (Holland and Quinn 1987: 4)

As such, cultural models play a role in cognition. They are necessary to inter-
pret the meaning of words (Cienki 1999; Emanatian 1995) and the diachronic
­evolution of concepts (Geeraerts and Grondelaers 1995). They are crucial in the
organization of prototypes and categories (Lakoff 1987; Sweetser 1987) and in the
structuring of metaphor and metonymy (Lakoff 1987; Lakoff and Kövecses 1987;
see also papers in Csordas 1994 and Fernandez 1991). In short, cultural models
are a “must” in metaphor studies.

1 What is presented here is just a concise overview of the evolution of the concept of cul-
ture ­in conceptual metaphor theory. The dates are not sharp, but a clue as to the chrono­
logical ­development of this concept in mainstream cognitive linguistics. A good indicator for
this development, or for any trend in this framework, is the biannual International Cognitive
Linguistics Conference (ICLC). The reader should bear in mind that: (i) Publication dates
do not tally with writing dates. It takes some time for a manuscript to be published, (ii)
These ­culture-in-metaphor stages are not discrete but diffuse; that is, there are always re­
lated publications that come before or after these periods, (iii) this is by no means an exhaus-
tive description of all the relevant work, but a selection of those publications that I con­
sider ­fundamental or interesting for this discussion. Therefore, some approaches are treated in
more detail than others depending on how influential they have been in this area in cognitive
linguistics.
 Conceptual metaphor and culture 319

However, the salient role of culture starts to fade away from cognitive linguis-
tics at the end of the ’90s. Up to the middle of the first decade in the new century,
culture loses ground little by little in metaphor research. The “hot topic” now is
to find psycholinguistic and neural evidence for conceptual (primary) metaphors.
It is difficult to establish the reasons why culture occupies a second place in this
period, but there are several converging factors that might shed some light on this
situation.
One is the distinction between primary and complex metaphors. Grady
(1997a, b, 1998, 2007; see also Grady, Taub, and Morgan 1996) put forward a
­proposal that considers two types of metaphors: primary metaphors that derive
directly from our bodily experience, and complex metaphors that result from
the combination of primary metaphors and cultural elements. This distinction
becomes very popular among conceptual metaphor researchers. This success is
partly due to Lakoff and Johnson’s acknowledgement in their 1999 book, and
partly thanks to the experimental possibilities that the concept of primary meta-
phor opens up (see Valenzuela 2009; Valenzuela and Soriano 2009). How­
ever, primary metaphors are a drawback for culture. They are solely grounded on
bodily experience, and thus, culture is left aside. As Grady (2007: 192–194) put it
years later:

Primary metaphors are simple patterns [. . .] which map fundamental perceptual concepts
onto equally fundamental but not directly perceptual ones. [. . .] Given that humans every-
where share the basic patterns of perception and experience that are reflected in primary
metaphors, these patterns ought to show up in languages around the world. In fact, it does
appear that primary metaphors are widespread across languages that are not related ge-
netically, areally, or culturally.

In other words, since human beings share the same body,2 primary meta-
phors are universal and culture-free. It is only in complex metaphors that culture
plays some role, and consequently, these can differ from culture to culture. Data
in Section 2 challenge the alleged culture-free character of primary metaphors.
Another factor could be the publication of Lakoff and Johnson’s (1999) new
book Philosophy in the flesh. Here, the authors highlighted several issues that be-
came “trendy” in cognitive linguistic research. One of them is the relationship
between metaphor, embodiment, and neural systems. Lakoff and Johnson (1999:

2 For authors such as Lakoff (2008: 28; see also Lakoff and Johnson (2003: 257)), human beings
not only share the same bodies but the same environments. In his own words: “. . . they [primary
metaphors] are learned by the hundreds the same way all over the world because people have the
same bodies and basically the same relevant environments.” This is clearly overstated and
shows a total Westerncentrism that neglects other cultural systems (see Section 2).
320 Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano

102–104) redefined the concept of embodiment and proposed three levels:3 neural
embodiment (concepts and cognitive operations at the neural level), phenome-
nological level (mental states, our bodies, our environment, and our physical and
social interaction at the conscious level), and the cognitive unconscious (mental
operations, unconscious knowledge and thought processes, linguistic process-
ing). This leads to further formulations of the traditional conceptual metaphor
theory that culminate in the so-called neural theory of metaphor (see Feldman
2006; Lakoff 2008). Here, meaning is understood in terms of mental simulation,
and the mappings between source and target domains as neural activations. In
fact, primary metaphors become central pieces of the theory. In this new vision
of conceptual metaphor theory, the culture component has almost faded away
completely.4
The “rediscovery” of culture in metaphor starts from the mid-2000s onward.
Authors such as Gibbs (1999), already at the turn of the century, advised that
­culture had to be brought back in the study of metaphor, especially from a psy-
cholinguistic perspective. However, it is not until this moment that culture stomps
back in metaphor research. There are several authors that contribute to this new
“awakening.”
Yu’s (1998, 2009) contrastive work on Chinese and English body-part meta-
phors is perhaps one of the first sets of studies that underlines the importance
of culture. Yu argues that, despite similarities, Chinese conceptualizes several
body parts differently from English, and that the reasons for these differences are
rooted in Chinese culture (philosophy and medicine). Similar contrastive analysis
can be found in Emanatian (1995), Ibarretxe-Antuñano (1999a, 1999b, 2002a),
Maalej (2004), Özçalışkan (2005), Soriano (2004), among others.
Kövecses (2005), who before clearly favored a universalist account of meta-
phor (see Kövecses 1995), now admits the importance of culture in metaphor
cross-cultural and within-culture variation. He argues that culture guides the

3 See Zlatev (2007) for a review of Lakoff and Johnson’s view on embodiment. Embodiment is a
complex concept. There are several interpretations of embodiment in different disciplines: cog-
nitive science, philosophy, anthropology, psychology . . . In this paper, the discussion stems from
the traditional understanding of this concept in cognitive linguistics (i.e., Lakoff and Johnson
1980; Johnson 1987; see Rohrer 2007 for a review). A full characterization of this concept is
­beyond the scope of this paper. The interested reader can consult the following references for
further information: Gibbs (2006); Varela et al. (1991); Violi (2004); Weiss et al. (1999); Wilson
(2002); Ziemke (2004); Ziemke, Zlatev, and Frank (2007); among others.
4 Culture is only used in terms of cultural frames. Lakoff (2008: 26) briefly notes that cultural
models are selected by “best fit” and that in combination with primary metaphors they give rise
to different metaphor systems, but he does not provide further details about how this process
takes places.
 Conceptual metaphor and culture 321

choice of those elements that participate in conceptual metaphor. Nonetheless,

Kövecses considers embodiment and social-cultural experience as separate sys-
tems (2005: 285) and maintains the distinction between primary and complex
metaphors on the basis of the role of culture. In his own words:

[. . .] whereas I find the notion of primary metaphor important for developmental and cogni-
tive purposes, I believe that complex metaphors are more important to cultural consider-
ations. It is complex metaphors – not primary metaphors – with which people actually
­engage in their thought in real cultural contexts. (Kövecses 2005: 11)

The influence of anthropological5 linguistics is also paramount in this period.

Palmer’s (1996, 2003) work on cultural linguistics becomes influential. He pro-
poses that language is the result of imagery-based verbal symbols, and that this
imagery, which is culturally constrained, can explain all sorts of linguistic phe-
nomena (figurative language, semantics, grammar . . .). Based on cases studies in
Tagalog and Coeur d’Alene, he argues that cognitive linguistics is a suitable
framework to account for language and culture. This line of research, to examine
the grounding of language in culture, has also been applied to metaphor analysis.
Several authors (see, for instance, papers in Maalej and Yu 2011; Sharifian and
Palmer 2007; Sharifian et al. 2008) are now devoted to discover how metaphorical
conceptualizations are rooted in particular cultural traditions.

1.2 The definition of culture

The concept of culture is complex. It can be defined in many ways depending on

the context, theoretical perspective or discipline (see Sarangi 2009 for a review).
In cognitive linguistics, culture usually refers to a system of collective beliefs,
worldviews, customs, traditions, values, and norms shared by the members of a
community. However, not every author actually applies this notion of culture in
the same way.
On some occasions, culture is more or less equated to a sort of contextual
background. The use of cultural information is very stereotyped to a particular
communicative situation; that is, it is similar to a pragmatic account of speech

5 Research in anthropology has always claimed the importance of culture in metaphor (see
D’Andrade 1995; Fernandez 1974, 1991; Gannon 2004; Holland and Quinn 1991; Kimmel 2001,
2004; Shore 1996; among others). This is not a new idea at all. It is only that cognitive linguistics
seems to pay more attention to this perspective in recent years (with the exception of cultural
models, as mentioned above).
322 Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano

acts where there is a set of rituals established by a given society that participants
necessary follow. Culture in this case is epitomized in cultural models. This is
sometimes what Lakoff and Johnson (1980) propose (see chapter 5). Lakoff’s
(1987) idealized cognitive models also illustrate this understanding of culture.
Kövecses (2005: 286) too considers culture as context: “the environment, the
­social-cultural context, and the communicative situation of groups of people or
individuals provide these groups and individuals with experiences that are spe-
cific to them.”
On some other occasions, culture equals language. Here, it is very typical to
offer contrastive analyses of linguistic examples in two or more languages, and
talk about differences in cultures. There are many examples of this type of ap-
proach. Kövecses (2005, see also 2002), for example, is a case in point. His Eng-
lish and Hungarian analysis of metaphors, which are solely based on linguistic
expressions, reduces culture to a comparison of a set of given metaphors in two
languages with no further inquiry into the (cultural) reasons why these mappings
take place.
Finally, a third way to interpret culture is to identify this concept with
­underlying cultural patterns and cultural artifacts, i.e., beliefs, worldviews,
­traditions. . . . This interpretation is very typical in authors related to an anthropo-
linguistic view of conceptual metaphor (e.g., Palmer 1996; Yu 2009; Maalej 2004).
Analyses in this approach are also mainly based on linguistic data but authors
provide explanations about the roots of conceptual metaphors in the cultural ar-
tifacts of a given culture.

1.3 The role and function of culture in metaphor

The interpretations of culture discussed above are intimately linked to the role
and function of culture in relation to metaphor. Two are perhaps the main trends.
On the one hand, some authors propose that metaphor plays a crucial role in the
explanation of how culture (i.e. cultural models) is structured. Most of the tradi-
tional work in conceptual metaphor theory is connected to this position. Authors
such as Lakoff and Johnson (1980), Lakoff and Kövecses (1987), Kövecses (2005)
argue that metaphor constitutes cultural models.6 Köveceses (2005: 200) says:

6 This is a traditional on-going discussion in metaphor research in general (not just in cognitive
linguistics): do cultural models reflect or constitute metaphor? Some authors such as Quinn
(1991) prefer the first option, whereas most authors in cognitive linguistics favor the second
choice. This debate goes beyond the scope of this paper, but the interested reader can consult the
abovementioned references for more information.
 Conceptual metaphor and culture 323

[. . .] the conceptualized experiential basis (often appearing as conceptual metonymies) and

the emerging conceptual metaphor contribute to the basic schematic structure of the cul-
tural model, and the simultaneously present cultural context fleshes out the details of the
schema.

On the other hand, other authors focus on how culture explains and constraints
metaphors. This is the case of authors such as Cienki (1999), Palmer (1996, 2003),
Yu (2009). The focus on this view is on explaining how culture contributes to the
interpretation of certain conceptual metaphors in a given context.

2 T
 he experiential basis of metaphor:
Bodily experience + culture sieve
The overview presented in the previous section can give us an idea of how meta-
phor and culture are interrelated in cognitive linguistics. The type of relationship
between these two elements might not be the same for every cognitive linguist,
but at least everybody recognizes the intrinsic and mutual dependency of culture
and metaphor. This paper defends a position that treats culture as a crucial, para-
mount element in metaphor analysis. It is argued that any metaphorical analysis
should take into account bodily-based elements as well as cultural elements in
order to properly interpret the conceptualizations underlying metaphorical map-
pings. The experiential basis of metaphors comprises, therefore, both the body –
sensorimotor experience common to all human beings – and the environment –
socio-cultural experience particular to each community. This position is not new.
It defends and brings back Johnson’s (1987, 1997) original definition of embodi-
ment, which included both physical sensorimotor and socio-cultural grounded
experiences. What is new is the proposal of how these two elements, body and
culture, interact when constructing the experiential basis of metaphors. A two-
stage7 process is proposed. In the first stage, the conceptual metaphor selects
those physical bodily-grounded experiences that contribute to understanding
and motivating the metaphorical mappings between the two different domains of
experience. Since all human beings share the same body, this first stage should
be the same for every human being, regardless of their background. In the second
stage, this bodily-based experience is purged, adapted, and modified by the

7 At this point, the order of these two stages – first, body and second, culture – is a just proposal;
future experimental studies will have to provide the necessary empirical data to support or dis-
regard this order of events in the construction of the experiential grounding of a conceptual
metaphor.
324 Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano

c­ ultural information available, and therefore, the result is not universal, but
­culture-specific. This is perhaps one of the main differences with the original
­embodiment proposal, as well as with mainstream analyses of conceptual meta-
phor theory (especially, what regards primary metaphors as will be discussed
­below).
It is in this context that I would like to introduce the concept of a culture sieve.
This is defined as an active mediating device that makes our physical, sensorimo-
tor universal experiences sift through the complex and socially acquired particu-
lar beliefs, knowledge, and worldview(s) intrinsic to belonging to one or several
cultures (see Caballero and Ibarretxe-Antuñano in press). The culture sieve is not
a passive element; it is not just a bunch of pieces of culture that add contextual
information to metaphor. The culture sieve has to be understood as an active
­actor in metaphor analysis. It manipulates culture elements in two ways. On the
one hand, it “filters” those elements that are in accordance with the premises of
a given culture, and on the other, it “impregnates” the mapping with touches of
a culture in contrast with other cultural and social systems. Figure 1 tries to cap-
ture the whole process for the building of the experiential basis in a conceptual
metaphor.
What follows illustrates how the physically and culturally grounded experi-
ences work together in the construction of conceptual metaphors, with a special
focus on the role that the culture sieve plays in this process. Two case studies are
discussed. The first one deals with the metaphorical link between perception and
cognition, more concretely the conceptual metaphor understanding/knowing

Fig. 1: The building of the experiential basis in a

conceptual metaphor.
 Conceptual metaphor and culture 325

is seeing, and its cross-linguistic and cross-cultural realization. The second ex-
ample analyses body-part based metaphors in Basque.

2.1 Culture and metaphor in perception and cognition

The study of perceptual modalities and their semantic extensions is a hot topic in
linguistics as well as in other related areas such as anthropology. Several studies,
both outside and within cognitive linguistics, have focused on the extended
meanings that perception words exhibit and on their possible motivations.
Some studies take a typological stance. For example, on the basis of more
than 50 languages, Viberg (1984, see also 2008) proposes a unidirectional dia-
chronic chain of semantic extensions in the senses, where vision extends to other
perceptual modalities (see also Vanhove 2008). He also suggests that these per-
ception verbs can develop meanings related to different semantic fields such as
cognition (“understand”) or social (“obey”).
Within cognitive linguistics, Sweetser’s (1990) analysis of English perception
verbs has been very influential. This author focuses on the connection between
body and mind. She argues that there is a whole systematic and coherent group
of metaphorical mappings that take the body as the source domain and the mind
as the target domain. She proposes a general conceptual metaphor mind-as-body
that includes others such as understanding/knowing is seeing as in I see your
point, it is a clear statement.
Understanding/knowing is seeing is one of the typical examples used in
cognitive linguistics to show the importance of embodiment in conceptual meta-
phors. The basic idea is that vision is our main source of information about the
world we live in, and as such, this perceptual modality offers the bodily-based
grounding experience necessary to understand and structure the domain of cog-
nition. Sweetser (1990: 38–39) gives the following explanation:

Vision and intellection are viewed in parallel ways, partly [. . .] because of the focusing abil-
ity of our visual sense – the ability to pick out one stimulus at will from many is a salient
characteristic of vision and of thought [. . .] But most of all, vision is connected with intellec-
tion because it is our primary source of objective data about the world. [. . .] Vision gives us
data from a distance. This ability to reach out is a significant parallel between vision and
intellection, since the objective and intellectual domain is understood as being an area of
personal distance [. . .] Vision is also identical for different people – that is to say, two people
who stand in the same place are generally understood to see the same thing.

Since vision works exactly the same for every human being (i.e., every human
being shares the bodily-basis), the universal character of this metaphor has been
326 Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano

taken for granted in mainstream cognitive linguistics literature. Sweetser herself

says that it is “fairly common cross-culturally, if not universal” (1990: 45). In fact,
this metaphor is considered a good example of a primary metaphor (see Grady’s
(1997a) list of primary metaphors or Lakoff and Johnson’s discussion in their
­Philosophy in the Flesh book 1999: 54, 238–240). As discussed above, primary
metaphors, in contrast to complex metaphors, are not culturally based, but solely
and directly grounded on sensorimotor experience.
Although it is true that this metaphor is quite pervasive in a wide variety of
languages (see Ibarretxe-Antuñano 1999a, 2002a; Vanhove 2008), the universal
status that some authors in cognitive linguistics have proposed or hinted for this
metaphor is perhaps excessive. One of the first studies to challenge the universal
character of this metaphor is Evans and Willkins’ (2000) work on Australian lan-
guages. On the basis of more than sixty Australian languages, these authors dem-
onstrate that understanding/knowing is seeing does not occur as such in
these languages. The link between perception and cognition does exist in Austra-
lian languages but, instead of using vision, they seem to prefer another percep-
tual modality, namely hearing. As they put it:

[. . .] within Australia, ‘hearing’ is the only perceptual modality that regularly maps into the
domain of cognition throughout the whole continent. It regularly extends to ‘think’, ‘know’
and ‘remember’, as well as ‘understand’ and ‘obey’, thus presenting a pattern quite dis-
tinct from the Indo-European one . . . When ‘see’ extends outside of the domain of percep-
tion, it most commonly shifts into the domain of social interaction. (Evans and Wilkins
2000: 576)

Evans and Wilkins argue that the preference of hearing over vision is due to
­cultural factors. For example, hearing represents inwardly directed attention. It
plays an important role in socialization practices, especially those between chil-
dren and adults. These authors also point out that hearing is less salient in liter-
ate than in oral cultures. Oral transmission in Australian aborigines is a funda-
mental part of acquiring knowledge.
The case of Australian languages is not an exception. Based on anthropologi-
cal data, Ibarretxe-Antuñano (2008a) compiles more cases that support Evans
and Wilkins’ work. The Suya Indians of Brazil (Seeger 1975), the Desana of the
equatorial rain forest of Colombian Northwest Amazon (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1981),
the Ommura of Papua New Guinea (Mayer 1982), the Sedang Moi from Indochina
(Devereux 1991) are all examples of cultures that prefer the understanding/
knowing is hearing metaphor. What is more, hearing is not the only alternative
to vision; the other perceptual modalities can also work as the source domain for
cognition. Ibarretxe-Antuñano (2008a: 25) also reports that “The Ongee of the
Andaman Islands in the South Pacific, for instance, order their lives by smells
 Conceptual metaphor and culture 327

(see Classen, Howes, and Synnot 1994; Pandya 1993) and the Tzotzil of Mexico
consider heat (hence, touch) to be the basic force of the cosmos (see Classen
1993).” In fact, reality is even more complex, since cultures such as the Shipibo-
Conibo of Peru create their shamanic cognition on the basis of several perceptual
modalities (vision, hearing, smell) (see Gebhart-Sayer 1985). On the basis of these
data, Ibarretxe-Antuñano concludes that the only way to explain the connection
between perception and cognition is by taking into account physical bodily-based
experience as well as culture. The former provides the biological basis for percep-
tion metaphors and the latter decides which aspects of that sensorimotor basis
are crucial for a given community.
In recent years, there has been more evidence against the hegemony of the
vision metaphor. Guerrero (2010) adds new data from the Uto-Aztecan family
(around 70 languages). Among the cognates in Uto-Aztecan she revises, there
are two related to the senses: *punV nï ‘eyes’ and *nakV ‘ears.’ Guerrero con-
cludes that, as happens in many other languages, these two body parts, eyes and
ears, develop the perceptual meanings ‘see, look’ and ‘hear, listen,’ respectively.
However, visual perception hardly develops metaphorical semantic extensions
related to cognition. These cognitive meanings (‘know,’ ‘understand,’ and ‘re-
member’) are mainly linked to the auditory modality in Uto-Aztecan. Burenhult
and Majid (2011) claim that smell plays a central role in the culture and language
of Aslian-speaking communities in the Malay Peninsula in general and, of the
Jahai in particular. The Jahai not only have a complex set of smell distinctions in
their language (a dozen basic odor terms) but also a whole smell-oriented ideo-
logical system.
These sources of data illustrate the importance of the culture sieve for
­conceptual metaphor in at least two main ways. First of all, these data demon-
strate that culture is crucial for primary metaphors, and therefore, it contra-
dicts pre­vious proposals about the exclusivity of bodily grounding for these
­metaphors. Lakoff and Johnson in the Afterword included in the new edition
of their Metaphors we live by (2003) state that “Inevitably, many primary meta-
phors are universal because everybody has basically the same kinds of bodies
and brains and lives in basically the same kinds of environments, so far as the
features relevant to metaphor are concerned” (2003: 257). Although it is true
that metaphors such as understanding/knowing is seeing are based on physi-
cal experience (see Ibarretxe-Antuñano 1999a for a detailed description of this
bodily-basis), this is not the whole story. The data reviewed above demon-
strate that although everybody has the same kinds of bodies and brains, not
­everybody lives in the same environments. Australian aborigines, South Ameri-
can Indians, and Europeans share the same perceptual organs, but neither are
their surroundings nor their cultural backgrounds equal. Therefore, the validity
328 Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano

of this primary metaphor depends directly on the usage that a given culture
makes of the senses.
A possible solution to overcome these counterexamples for so-called primary
metaphors such as understanding/knowing is seeing would be to propose a
more general metaphor. Cognition is perception, for example, could act as the
primary metaphor that covers all perceptual modalities and, thus, avoiding the
choice of a specific sense modality (Ibarretxe-Antuñano 2008a). But even in this
case, primary metaphors have to pass through the culture sieve. The concrete
­instantiation of this general primary metaphor would be constrained by the cul-
ture in question (knowing/understanding is seeing for Europeans, knowing/­
understanding is hearing for Australian aborigines).
Another issue that these data reveal is that there is variation in metaphor
across cultures. That is, the senses are windows to our world and channels of
­information in all cultures, but the sense that each culture chooses as the main
vehicle to acquiring knowledge does not have to be the same. Kövecses (2005:
246–7) explains this variation by means of a differential experiential focus, that is,
“different peoples may be attuned to different aspects of their bodily functioning
in relation to a target domain, or that they can ignore or downplay certain aspects
of their bodily functioning as regards the metaphorical conceptualization of a
particular target domain.” What Kövecses proposes is that whereas the bodily
basis of some metaphors is universal, not all the elements that form that em­
bodied experience play a role in the emergence of conceptual metaphor. Accord-
ing to Kövecses, the choice of which elements take part in conceptual metaphor,
as well as their number and function, “depends on a variety of factors in the sur-
rounding cultural context” (2005: 249). A similar proposal is Yu’s (2008a) notion
of culture filter. Yu argues that conceptual metaphors emerge thanks to the inter-
action that exists between body and culture. He says that, “while body is a poten-
tially universal source domain from which bodily-based metaphors emerge, cul-
ture serves as a filter that only allows certain bodily experiences to pass through
so that they can be mapped onto certain target-domain concepts” (2008a: 249).8
However, the culture sieve that I propose in this paper goes beyond the sim-
ple passing through of certain elements. That is, both Kövecses’ experiential
­focus and Yu’s culture filter presuppose that the role of culture is just like a ref­
eree, like an authority figure that grants or denies permission to culture elements

8 Based on Coseriu’s (1967, 1986, 1988) three-level model for linguistics, Zlatev (2011) has pro-
posed to relate universal aspects of conceptual metaphor with Coseriu’s “universal level,” and
language and culture-specific ones with the “historical level.” This separation was actually
­already present in Zlatev’s (1997), where this author differentiated between embodiment and
situatedness.
 Conceptual metaphor and culture 329

in the configuration of conceptual metaphor. The reasoning is the following:

There are five perceptual modalities as possible source domains for cognition.
The Australian culture filter allows the hearing body source domain pass, and
forbids the other four. I would like to argue that the culture sieve is more complex.
It filters bodily-based information but it also impregnates it with the particular
view of a culture. The following section illustrates this point with examples from
body-parts in Basque.

2.2 Culture and metaphor in body-parts

In the previous section, I use a case of cross-linguistic and cross-cultural varia-

tion in conceptual metaphor, where the culture sieve functions as a filter. How-
ever, I would like to argue that the culture sieve is more than that. The culture
sieve not only allows certain culture elements to pass, it impregnates them with
the particular conceptualization of a given culture. This is important because it
will help us to unveil certain differences in the choice of source domains for simi-
lar metaphors, as well as to bring forward different conceptualizations in the
­organization of the world around us. In what follows I discuss this role of the
culture sieve in body-part related metaphorical mappings in Basque.
Body-part vocabulary is the source domain of many conceptual metaphors.
Among other things, body-parts are used to talk about space (at the foot of
the mountain), cognition (to have a good head for figures), and emotions (hard-
hearted ). Basque, a language isolate spoken on both sides of the Western Pyrenees,
is not exception. Body parts are used to describe all these conceptual domains;
space: mendiaren oina (mountain.gen foot.abs) ‘at the foot of the mountain,’
­cognition: buruargi (head.light) ‘clever,’ and emotions: bihotzgogor (heart.hard)
‘hard-hearted.’ However, what superficially seems to be the same metaphorical
mappings in Basque and English (as the language for comparison) entails a dif-
ferent underlying conceptual organization as well as a different kind of embodied
experience. These differences can only be discovered if the bodily basis for these
metaphors is complemented with bits and pieces of Basque culture.
One of the semantic extensions of the body-part head is the spatial meaning
‘top’ as in at the head of the mountain. The spatial meaning of head as top can
develop further metaphorical meanings such as the head of the department. Here,
the metaphor at work is important is up. In this metaphor, the domain of impor-
tance is conceptualized by means of a vertical axis, in such a way that important
elements are understood as being located at the highest position. This highest
position on the vertical axis is construed by means of the spatial meaning of head
as top.
330 Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano

In Basque, buru ‘head’ can also refer to the ‘top’ as in mendiburu (mountain.
head) ‘summit,’ but this does not mean that it works the same as it does in Eng-
lish. The semantic mechanisms at work in Basque are a little bit different. Buru
does not mean ‘top’ per se, but ‘extreme.’ The orientation that it takes strictly de-
pends on the co-­occurring words. It is interpreted as ‘top’ with mountain, but it
can also be used as ‘beginning’ (iturburu (fountain.head) ‘spring/origin, source’)
and as ‘end’ (asteburu (week.head) ‘weekend’). In fact, expressions such as buruz
buru ‘from head to tail’ reveal that there is no concrete spatial orientation at all
in this word. It all depends on context as well as on the anthropomorphic/­
zoomorphic perspective, which provides the vertical/horizontal orientation. The
spatial meaning complexity of buru, however, does not stop here. Buru also
means ‘center’ as in azaburu (cabbage.head) ‘heart of cabbage,’ bideburu (road.
head) ‘crossroads’ (for a description of buru, see Ibarretxe-Antuñano 2002b).
Now, the question that immediately arises is, what is the conceptual metaphor
underlying an expression such as sailburu (section.head) ‘head of department’ in
Basque? Is it important is up as in English or important is centre?
Both of these could be possible but it seems that the one that works in Basque
is important is center. There are several examples that can support this claim.
For instance, the word etxeburu (house.head). This word refers to the principal
part of a traditional house façade, the place where the coat of arms is located. The
etxeburu is situated at the center of the façade. Another example is the word
­buruzagi ‘chieftain.’ Nowadays, hierarchical organizations are usually conceptu-
alized as pyramidal. That is, the person in charge is at the top and the rest below,
at different levels. Without anthropological information, one could take it for
granted that the interpretation of buru in buruzagi corresponds to this pyramidal
organization. However, one should take into account that in ancient Basque
­culture, clan members were represented in small stone circles. Each stone repre-
sented one member and one duty, and the chieftain, the buruzagi, was repre­
sented with another stone at the center of the circle (Frank pers. comm.; see also
Ott 1993; Zaldua Etxabe 2006). In other words, the hierarchical structure is not
pyramidal, but circular. Therefore, the head is not at the top of the pyramid but at
the center of the circle. In sum, the link between importance and the body-part
head exists in Basque; the difference lies in the internal interpretation of the head
that triggers this metaphorical mapping, that is, center instead of top. This differ-
ence is unveiled thanks to the culture sieve that provides us with the necessary
cultural background to correctly interpret these cases.
Another interesting example that requires the culture sieve is the case of
gogo, a Basque cultural word (not a body-part per se), in contrast with buru ‘head’
and bihotz ‘heart.’ The conceptual domains of cognition and emotions are also
related to body-parts. The head is usually associated with intelligence, rational
 Conceptual metaphor and culture 331

thinking, consciousness, and common sense (e.g., to have a good head for sth, to
get one’s head around sth, headhunter). The heart is typically related to the physi-
cal, irrational passions and desires (e.g., hard-hearted, to break one’s heart, to
open one’s heart to sb). These associations correspond to the Cartesian dualism
between body and soul typical in Western culture (for other conceptualizations,
see papers in Sharifian et al. 2008).
Basque also responds to the same dualism, at least at first sight. The head,
buru, is related to the rational side and the heart, bihotz, to the irrational side. For
example, on the one hand, we have buruan sartu (head.loc enter.pfv) ‘to under-
stand,’ buruargi (head.clear) ‘clever’ and on the other, bihozgogor (heart.hard)
‘hard-hearted,’ bihotzak egin (heart.erg make.pfv) ‘to be moved’ (see Ibarretxe-
Antuñano 2008b, for more information).
However, the dualism that buru and bihotz show is only half the story. The
other half belongs to the cultural word gogo. Cultural words are language vehicles
to discover deep conceptualizations in culture and thought, and as such are dif-
ficult to translate into other languages. Gogo is no exception. It covers a wide
­array of meanings ‘mind,’ ‘will,’ ‘memory,’ ‘spirit’ . . . (see Goenaga 1971, 1972,
1973; Ibarretxe-Antuñano 2008c). What is interesting for this discussion is that
gogo does not separate the rational from the irrational, but just the opposite;
both sides are blended in this word.9 Gogo is used to describe emotions such as
gogomin (gogo.pain) ‘ardent desire, passion’ as well as to characteristics and pro-
cesses associated with cognition such as gogamen ‘intelligence.’ What is more,
gogo and the body-parts buru and bihotz are interchangeable in some contexts:
gogoratu and bururatu ‘remember, think of,’ and gogoa galdu and bihotz galdu
‘become discouraged.’ There is nevertheless one point to bear in mind. Despite
this interchangeability, the connotations are not the same. Gogo is a kind of prim-
itive thought or rational soul. That is, the intellectual reasoning process is based
on intuition and emotion, and at the same time, the emotional process is touched
by the intellect. In other words, cognition and feelings are not differentiated in
this word.
The case of gogo, buru, and bihotz is a good example that demonstrates the
need for a culture sieve. Without cultural information about gogo, a study on the
relationship between body-parts and cognition/emotion would be superficial. It
would show that the Cartesian dichotomy exists in Basque incardinated in buru

9 It seems that the connection between intellectual and emotional processes is also common in
some Asian languages. Chinese xin, Indonesian hati, and Thai caj, all refer to heart and mind
(see, Yu 2008b; Siahaan 2008; and Zlatev et al. 2012, respectively). The difference with Basque,
however, is that gogo is not a body-part itself, and therefore, the link is not between a body-part
and the intellectual and emotional sides.
332 Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano

and bihotz, but it would miss a fundamental part of Basque conceptualization

of the world. There are three issues that one should bear in mind to understand
this “double” conceptualization: (i) Basque has always been in contact with sur-
rounding Romance cultures, (ii) Basque has been an oral language until fairly
recently (16th century), and (iii) Basque has taken up as linguistic models earlier
pre-20th-century texts, which were regularly composed for religious purposes (see
Garai 2001, 2002; Oyharçabal 2001). Therefore, it is not surprising to find that
buru and bihotz are related to cognition and emotions in Basque; the question is,
nevertheless, to unveil which the original native organization of the world is in
this language. What gogo seems to demonstrate is that the dichotomy between
body and soul in Basque was not the main philosophical basis, or at least not the
only one.

3 Conclusions
This paper has discussed the relationship between conceptual metaphor and cul-
ture in cognitive linguistics. The first part has offered an overview of how these
two concepts have been dealt with in this framework over the past 30 years. It has
been argued that the mutual dependency and intrinsic relationship between cul-
ture and metaphor are a fact in cognitive linguistic research, but that not every-
body in this framework shares exactly the same views on how this relationship
takes place. Over the last three decades, culture in cognitive linguistics has gone
through different stages (acknowledgment, oblivion, renaissance), has been de-
fined in different ways (context, language, culture artifacts) and has been used
for different purposes (to constrain metaphor, to be structured by metaphor). The
second part stands up for a position that defends the crucial role of the cultural
component in conceptual metaphor. It has proposed a two-stage process (physi-
cal bodily-grounded experience plus the cultural background) to build up the
experiential basis of conceptual metaphor and has discussed two case studies
that demonstrate this viewpoint. Section 2.1 has revised the link between per­
ception and cognition. It has been shown that the metaphor understanding is
seeing is not as universal as stated in the cognitive linguistics literature; other
cultures prefer understanding is hearing or understanding is smelling
­instead. These data constitute a challenge to one of the basic assumptions in
­primary metaphor theory: its culture-free character. It is true that human beings
share the same bodies, and that these function in a similar way. However, the
experiential basis of metaphors is always conditioned by culture, and primary
metaphors are no exception. Section 2.2 has focused on body-part metaphors in
Basque. Two main points aroused. First, superficially similar metaphors might (i)
 Conceptual metaphor and culture 333

have different internal conceptualizations (the relationship between importance

and head in Basque emerges from the important is center metaphor and not
from important is up), and (ii) hide a different and more complex web of meta-
phorical mappings (Basque shares with other languages Cartesian dualism in
head-mind and heart-emotion metaphors but it also retains another non-dual
conceptualization of mind and body in the word gogo). Second, cultural know-
ledge is the only tool to unveil these differences.
What these two case studies have demonstrated is that conceptual meta-
phors are grounded in bodily experience, but that they have to be sieved through
the cultures in which they are born so that they may be properly interpreted and
understood. This relationship between bodily experience and cultural grounding
is fundamental, and it is not a contradiction as some authors have proposed (see
Rakova 2002, 2003). One of the advantages of the culture sieve is that it accounts
for the universality of a bodily basis as well as for the particularity of a cultural
background.
There are still further questions to be explored in future research. One issue
that needs more empirical data is whether language speakers are aware of the
role of culture in these metaphorical mappings. For instance, one wonders
whether Basque speakers, nowadays mostly bilingual in Spanish or French, are
aware of the cultural bases so entrenched in the language. In language contact
situations, especially in those where the minority language is in disadvantage
as Basque is, cultural motivations underlying language conceptualizations are
sometimes hidden, forgotten, or changed. Sharifian (2008, 2011) refers to this
phenomenon as the heterogeneity of cultural conceptualizations. In his own
words: “Cultural conceptualisations enable the members of a cultural group to
think, so to speak, in one mind. These conceptualisations are not equally
­imprinted in the minds of people but are rather represented in a distributed fash-
ion across the minds in a cultural group” (2008: 187). That is, a given cultural-
linguistic community shares a number of cultural conceptualizations, but the
members of that community are not necessarily aware of all conceptualizations.
It depends on the individual speaker’s familiarity with the beliefs and norms of
the community in question, as well as on his/her socio-cultural situatedness.10
This could be the case in Basque (see also Frank 2013). Further studies should
investigate whether Basque speakers, specially the younger generations, realize
that the conceptual metaphor at work in buruzagi is not important is up as in

10 The importance of the individual speaker in cultural conceptualizations is not a new idea in
linguistics. Although Sharifian’s model does not discuss it, this could be seen as corresponding
to the third level in Coseriu’s (1985, 1988) model, what he calls “the individual level” (see Zlatev
2011, for a discussion).
334 Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano

the surrounding Romance languages, but important is center. These studies

should also clarify whether Basque speakers are conscious about the relevance of
the word gogo and its cultural load.
In conclusion, culture and metaphor belong together, and cognitive linguis-
tics is a suitable approach to study how they interact. Let us only hope that the
“culture-in-metaphor renaissance” we live in now grows even stronger and that
new metaphor studies in languages and cultures come about to make this period
even more flourishing.

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