Body schema and body image in metaphorical cognition

Neurologists, philosophers, psychologists, and also linguists frequently employ the notion of the ‘body schema.’ Many divergent definitions of this notion were provided till Shaun Gallagher (1986) clarified the terminological and conceptual confusion by proposing a clear distinction between the two concepts of ‘body schema’ and body image.’ I propose that two different roles played by the body in cognition can be identified on the basis of this distinction, corresponding to two different levels of embodiment. In this account, a first level of embodiment is constituted by invisible metonymies that have aspects of the body schema as their source domain. Visible metaphors occur at a second level of embodiment and take their source domains from aspects of the body image. In the first case, the mapping is directly from sensorimotor abilities to perception; in the second case, the mapping is from concepts that are related to our bodily experiences to abstract concepts.