Argumentation by Figurative Language in Verbal Communication: a Pragmatic Perspective

This tendency reflects egocentric distance. For example, the examples in (8) show the cognitive process of semantic extension from mouth as ‘facial organ’ (i.e. something concrete) to mouth as ‘talkativeness’ (i.e. something abstract). In sum, polysemy can be significant evidence which shows that experientialist epistemology really works in language users’ mind. In other words, the developing way of polysemy reflects language users’ cognitive activity, which aims to understand a new experience by metaphorically (or metonymically) mapping their old experience to it. This cognitive process is not arbitrary, but evolves following systematic way, as discussed above.