Abstract

During the last two decades of the 20th century, a kaleidoscope of ideas, theories and philosophies has given birth to the Embodied Cognition program, along with the rediscovery of the centrality of semantics over syntax. This cognitive semantic turn insisted on the metaphorical nature of the conceptual activity to dismantle the tenets of the so-called Standard Cognitive Science. Against Chomsky’s disembodied cognitivism, the Conceptual Theory of Metaphor (Lakoff, Johnson 1980) was followed by a great deal of research which confirmed the pervasiveness of this «fact of thought». While conceptual metaphors consist in mappings across two conceptual domains, whose essence is understanding and experiencing one thing in terms of another, more recently the Theory of Conceptual Integration has provided an in-depth investigation into the nature of those mappings, showing that metaphor is only one of the outcomes of a more general process of blending mental spaces (Fauconnier, Turner 1998). This paper aims to highlight some similarities between the aforementioned approaches and the theory of language of the German psychologist Karl Bühler, a critical exponent of the Gestalt psychology. The parallel is justified by the fact that a hotly debated issue in the Gestalt schools was precisely that of Übersummativität, which Bühler discussed according to the crucial role of compounds in the structure of language. In metaphor, which for Bühler is indeed a peculiar kind of compound, supersummativity occurs together with subsummativity. The second plays, in fact, a complementary function in the process of mixing the spheres of meaning, filtering out incompatible elements. Hence, Bühler’s sematological perspective reveals surprising correspondences with the current approaches since both highlight the structural character and the properties of conceptual integration. Nevertheless, if, according to Bühler, the indeterminacy of the sign, which is systemic before than pragmatic, relates to the creativity of language, in the cognitive vein meanings are not given by language but merely «mirror» conceptual structures construed independently of any semiotic activity