Abstract This article outlines the significant role that metonymy plays in how we understand our bodies. A primary way we experience our bodies is through enduring contiguous relations between bodily sensations and actions with various patterns of cognitive appraisals. These contiguous relations between bodies and minds are dynamic, causal, and not merely correlational. The links between bodily experiences and cognitive appraisals also suggest that metonymy is more relevant to understanding human bodies than are metaphorical cross-domain mappings.
Raymond W. Gibbs (2025) studied this question.
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