A Basic Course in Anthropological Linguistics (Studies in Linguistic ...

148 A BASIC COURSE IN ANTHROPOLOGICAL LINGUISTICS
practices, in naming sports teams (Detroit Tigers, Chicago Bears, etc.), in
heraldic practices, and the list could go on and on.
Metaphors based on words for sensation and perception are called root
metaphors. These suggest that we conceptualize an abstract phenomenon such
as [thinking] as an extension of sensation. The number of root metaphorical
constructions (idioms, phrases, etc.) in vocabularies throughout the world is
immeasurable. Here is a handful in English based on vision:
flash of insight
spark of genius
a bright mind
a brilliant idea
aflicker of intelligence
a luminous achievement
a shining mind
a bright fie in his eyes
sparking interest in a subject
words glowing with meaning
flickering ideas
But vision is not the only sensory modality people use to name [thinking]
processes. The etymology of common words for such processes in English
reveals that vision is used alongside touch and grasping as root source domains:
apprehend (from Latin “to seize, lay hold of ’)
comprehend (from Latin prehendere “to grasp”)
discern (from Latin dis + cerno “to separate”)
examine (from Latin ex + agmen- “to pull out from a row’’)
idea (from Greek ideein “to see”)
intelligence (from Latin intellegere “to pick, choose”)
perceive (from Latin -cipio “to seize”)
prospect (from Latin pro + spectus “looking ahead”)
scrutinize (from Latin scrutari “to pick through trash”)
speculate (from Latin speculari “to look at”)
theory (from Greek theoria “view”)
think (from Old English thincean “to take, handle”)
understand (from Old English ongietan “to see, feel”)
A sampling of various unrelated languages reveals that this kind of
metaphorical modeling is universal: