The perceptual roots of metaphor

The chapter answers some questions concerning the nature of information conveyed and communicated by metaphorical expressions. Specifically, the chapter addresses questions like what the codes of metaphors are, and whether universal or relativistic; with what signals the message is activated; whether there is a metaphorical alphabet; what is transposed in the metaphorical construct and how, and where does the transfer occur. According to Albertazzi, in terms of message transmission, the meaning of a metaphor originates from the interaction between the imagination and the expressive forms involved in the metaphor’s construction by its transmitter and the experience of its receiver. Curiously, there sometimes appears to be less noise in the comprehension of a metaphorical message (in the case of creative metaphors), than in ordinary communication. What is it that produces this universality of the code despite the complexity of the reference? In what space(s) is the message constructed, projected and transmitted? The thesis that the chapter puts forward is that metaphors are Gestalten and behave as Gestalten. Precisely because of this structure, metaphors are exact descriptions of perceptual and/or mental aspects of reality. In the actual occurrence of metaphorical creation the components of metaphor are ‘occluded’, deformed and fused because of their mutual internal relatedness. It is consequently possible to identify various types of boundaries, upper and lower, in the construction of the conceptual metaphorical whole, in the superimposition of different types of mental continuum. Albertazzi ventures a definition of creative metaphor, in terms of amodal presentation, in the sense that given in conceptualization are wholes which are entirely non-existent from the point of view of taxonomic, objective, classification.