This is not a paper about mime or vocal impersonation; this is a paper about metaphor. In particular, it is about the metaphors linguists use in talking about language. I will try to characterize some of the axioms which underlie the metaphor systems of much of modern linguistics, which I will call ‘Physical Metaphors’ for reasons which will become clear shortly, and will provide some different...

We suggest that the impact of metaphoric language does not depend entirely on the conceptual metaphor that is evoked, nor on the form the metaphoric language takes, but also on the steps involved in evoking a given metaphor. This is especially apparent in minimalist poetry. Readers are given hints, cultural conventions, or no guidance at all, on how to fill in missing metaphoric domains and map...