Bridging embodiment and culture script: a Chinese perspective on contemporary metaphor theory and its empirical grounding
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980) has reshaped our understanding of metaphor, elevating it from a rhetorical ornament to an important mechanism of human thought. The claim that our conceptual system is grounded in embodied experience has generated evidence for universal tendencies, such as HAPPY IS UP or ANGER IS HEAT. However, this emphasis on embodiment has exposed a potential theoretical tension: if metaphor is primarily driven by embodied experience, how do we account for the cultural specificities observed across languages? Kövecses (2020) addressed this tension by introducing Extended Conceptual Metaphor Theory (ECMT), a multilevel view that acknowledges contextual and cultural factors. Yet ECMT's hypotheses call for support by evidence from psychological or psycholinguistic experiments (Dong and Duan, 2020). This paper conceptualizes embodied grounding and cultural script match as experimentally operationalizable dimensions and proposes that the processing cost of cultural mismatch may be moderated by the degree of embodied grounding, thereby specifying a psychologically testable mechanism within the broader framework.Cross-linguistic studies of body-part metaphors have consistently revealed that pure embodiment accounts capture universals but miss variations; and pure cultural accounts risk severing metaphor from biological moorings. Crucially, embodiment does not operate in a vacuum. Ren et al. (2021) showed that the same bodily sensation can yield opposite embodied effects depending on metaphorical representation, indicating that embodied processing is modulated by cognitive and cultural factors (Shahabifar et al., 2024;Wang et al., 2024). Similarly, while abstract concepts may be grounded in concrete experiences (Wei and Thierry, 2025), the extent to which such grounding is universal versus culturally modulated remains debated. Sun's (2019) Contemporary Metaphorology provides a dual-dimension framework that integrates embodied cognition with cultural scripts to account for metaphor across languages and cultures. Within this framework, embodied cognition, drawing on Wang's (2019) Embodied-Cognitive Linguistics (ECL), captures the relationship between reality, cognition, and language and provides the basis for the embodied dimension, whereas cultural scripts provide the cultural dimension by accounting for culturally mediated interpretations. Cultural scripts, understood as a society's implicit "cultural grammar" (Wierzbicka, 1994), offer a framework for examining culturally grounded interpretations while reducing reliance on ethnocentric assumptions (Goddard & Wierzbicka, 2007;Wierzbicka, 1994). Against this theoretical background, the present article aims to clarify Sun's (2019) dual-dimension framework, review its empirical applications in body-metaphor studies, and translate its embodied and cultural dimensions into psychologically testable constructs, thereby identifying an experimental agenda for examining its psychological plausibility. Specifically, it addresses two questions: RQ1: How can the embodied and cultural dimensions framework be operationalized as psychologically testable constructs in metaphor comprehension? RQ2: How can experimental evidence clarify the respective and interactive contributions of embodied grounding and cultural scripts to real-time metaphor comprehension?Embodied-Cognitive Linguistics (ECL) is a systematic development of the experientialist philosophy underpinning CMT (Zhou and Luo, 2024). ECL posits a "Reality-Cognition-Language" principle, asserting that human conceptualization originates from bodily interactions with the physical and social world. For example, the metaphor HIGH STATUS IS UP illustrates how these three dimensions are connected.At the level of reality, human bodily experience often associates higher spatial positions with greater visual access, physical dominance, or elevated social position. At the level of cognition, these recurring embodied experiences can be abstracted into a conceptual association between vertical elevation and status or importance. At the level of language, this association may be expressed through metaphorical forms such as high-ranking official, rise to power. Thus, the principle captures a basic trajectory whereby recurrent bodily experience provides experiential grounding for conceptualization, which is subsequently conventionalized in linguistic expression. Importantly, the same embodied basis does not determine every linguistic realization; cultural and linguistic experience can conventionalize different extensions of an embodied association. This proposition emphasizes both the objectivity of embodied experience, our shared physical structure, neural basis, and sensorimotor capabilities, and the subjective operation of the mind through higher-order cognitive processes such as attention, comparison, and inference. This dialectic avoids radical embodiment by recognizing that bodily experience is mediated by cognition rather than directly mapped onto language. Ren et al. (2021) found that the late positive component (LPC), indexing latestage cognitive resource allocation, was sensitive to congruency between bodily weight sensation and metaphorical meaning, with congruent pairings eliciting larger LPC amplitudes. Similarly, Wei and Thierry (2025) found that both Chinese and English speakers spontaneously mapped power onto physical size, as indexed by comparable P3 effects across languages, suggesting that this particular metaphorical mapping may have a shared embodied basis across the two language groups. While such findings suggest that embodied experience can provide a common basis or constraint for certain metaphorical mappings, they do not imply that all embodied mappings are universal.Rather, the extent to which particular embodied mappings are shared across languages and cultures remains an empirical question. Embodied experience may constrain the range of metaphorical possibilities, while cultural and linguistic factors can influence which mappings become conventionalized in a given language. Drawing on Wierzbicka's (2002) theory of cultural scripts and Sharifian's (2011) Cultural Linguistics, this dimension views cultural scripts as cognitive filters that shape which metaphorical mappings become preferred and conventionalized. For example, jealousy is conventionally expressed through 吃醋 (eating vinegar) in Chinese, whereas English commonly uses the green-eyed monster metaphor. Thus, cultural scripts do not eliminate alternative mappings but selectively privilege particular source-target pairings and their associated evaluative and affective meanings. Sun's (2019) framework integrates embodied cognition with cultural scripts, with ECL providing the embodied dimension and cultural scripts accounting for culturally mediated variation in metaphorical mappings. The relationship between embodiment and cognition can be bidirectional: conceptual representations may modulate embodied processing, as suggested by Ren et al. (2021), although this study does not directly establish cultural scripts as the source of such modulation. Whether culturally shared scripts systematically influence embodied processing therefore remains a theoretical hypothesis requiring further cross-cultural experimental investigation. Wang et al. (2024) and Shahabifar et al. (2024) provide evidence that bodily experience, through sensorimotor priming or physical load, can influence metaphor comprehension and abstract conceptualization. Conversely, Ren et al. (2021) showed that experimentally manipulated metaphorical representations of weight can modulate the direction of the weight-embodiment effect, suggesting that higher-order conceptual representations may exert top-down influence on embodied processing. However, this finding does not establish cultural scripts as the source of such modulation. Evidence from Arabic further illustrates how embodied experience can be intertwined with culturally grounded conceptualization (Altakhaineh & Zibin, 2024), suggesting that the relationship between embodiment and cultural cognition extends beyond Chinese and English Whether culturally shared scripts systematically modulate embodied processing, however, remains an open question for cross-cultural psycholinguistic research. By incorporating cultural scripts as a fundamental dimension, Sun's (2019) dual-dimensional framework provides a theoretical basis for accounting for culturally grounded phenomena, such as culturally laden body-part metaphors and verticalhierarchical spatial terms, that may not be fully explained by shared embodied experience alone. The present study does not propose this framework anew; rather, it introduces its theoretical rationale and develops an empirical agenda for examining how its embodied and cultural dimensions can be operationalized and tested in metaphor processing.The dual-dimension framework outlined above has been explored in corpus-based comparative studies of body-part metaphors in Chinese and English, providing descriptive evidence for its applicability. Corpus-based comparisons drawing on resources such as the Center for Chinese Linguistics and Corpus of Contemporary American English have identified a pattern of distributions in Chinese and English body-part metaphors (Sun and Cui, 2021). Methodologically, however, corpus studies operate at the level of linguistic products, identifying metaphorical expressions, distributional patterns, shared mappings, and language-specific extensions. Such findings provide preliminary descriptive support for the framework, but they may also reflect factors such as frequency, lexicalization, conventionality, genre, lexical availability, and corpus composition. Thus, corpus evidence alone cannot establish the cognitive mechanisms underlying metaphor processing or determine how cultural scripts constrain real-time comprehension. As Goddard and Wierzbicka (2007) note, cultural scripts can account for "rhetorical" speech practices such as active metaphor, but how they influence online comprehension remains an open empirical question.The dual-dimension framework thus faces a critical evidential gap. To date, the vast majority of empirical support derives from corpus analyses and researcher intuitions. These data reveal what metaphorical patterns exist and where they differ across languages, but they do not illuminate how these patterns are processed in real time or whether the embodied and cultural dimensions proposed in Sun's (2019) dualdimension framework interact during online comprehension. To move from descriptive evidence to a testable psychological account, a prototype experimental design can be used to independently manipulate embodied grounding and cultural script match. For example, the study could recruit two culturally distinct L1 groups with comparable language proficiency and present them with metaphorical expressions matched as closely as possible for lexical frequency, familiarity, conventionality, and linguistic complexity. The critical materials would be distributed across conditions. Embodied grounding and cultural script match would be independently validated through the norming procedures described above rather than assigned solely on theoretical grounds.Online processing could be assessed using reading or lexical-decision paradigms, with reaction time and accuracy as primary dependent measures and eye-tracking or ERP measures as complementary indices of processing dynamics. The critical prediction is an interaction between the two dimensions: cultural mismatch should increase processing cost, but this mismatch cost should be larger for less embodied than for highly embodied mappings. In other words, strong embodied grounding is predicted to attenuate, rather than eliminate, the processing cost associated with cultural incongruence. This interaction would provide a direct and falsifiable test of the proposed relationship between embodied grounding and cultural scripts, while allowing the relative contribution of each dimension to be examined across cultural groups.Without validation at the level of psychological processing, the dual-dimension framework remains a post-hoc descriptive apparatus rather than a predictive explanatory theory. To move from description to explanation, the framework must generate testable hypotheses about human behavior that can be falsified or supported through experimentation. The core experimental constructs are straightforward. First, the embodied grounding of a metaphorical mapping-the degree to which it is anchored in sensorimotor experience-can be operationalized as a measurable, continuous variable. There is no single universally accepted metric for determining the degree of embodied grounding. A practical validation procedure would therefore combine independent norming with behavioral and semantic measures. Participants could first rate the bodily or sensorimotor relevance of metaphorical mappings on a Likert scale (e.g., 1-7), with higher ratings indicating stronger embodied grounding. These ratings could be complemented by established measures of related properties, such as concreteness, imageability, sensory experience, and bodily relevance, to assess convergent validity. Second, cultural script match refers to the degree to which a metaphorical mapping conforms to culturally shared semantic and pragmatic expectations within a speech community. Researchers could first identify candidate mappings through corpus evidence and expert analysis and then validate them through independent participant norming. Native or bilingual participants from the relevant speech communities could rate each mapping for cultural familiarity, naturalness, appropriateness, and expectedness. Cross-cultural comparisons could then be used to determine the degree of cultural congruence: a mapping would be considered more culturally congruent when it receives higher expectedness and appropriateness ratings within the target cultural group, whereas a culturally incongruent mapping would show 批注 [A12]: -Pages 6-7, Section 3: The proposed interaction between embodiment and cultural scripts is interesting but remains general. Please provide a concrete experimental example, including participant groups, materials, independent variables, and dependent variables.-Pages 6-7, Section 3: The manuscript describes the proposed predictions as testable but does not provide a sufficiently detailed experimental design. Please clarify how the two proposed variables would be manipulated independently.-Page 6, Section 3: The distinction between highly embodied and less embodied metaphors is not sufficiently clear. Please explain how researchers can determine the degree of embodied grounding and whether an established measurement procedure is available. lower culturally grounded expectedness despite remaining interpretable. The framework's central prediction is an interaction between embodied grounding and cultural script match: culturally mismatched metaphors are expected to incur greater processing costs, but this mismatch cost should be moderated by the degree of embodied grounding. This prediction can be tested using multiple online processing measures. At the behavioral level, culturally mismatched metaphors are expected to elicit longer reaction times and, where the task requires comprehension or interpretation, lower accuracy. Eye-tracking measures can provide more fine-grained evidence of processing difficulty, with mismatched metaphors expected to show longer firstfixation or gaze durations, longer total reading times, and more frequent regressions.ERP measures can further provide temporally sensitive evidence: enhanced N400 responses may be associated with greater difficulty in semantic access or integration, while later positive components such as the LPC/P600-like component may index additional conceptual integration or reanalysis demands. If behavioral, eye-tracking, and ERP measures yield converging results, this pattern would be consistent with the view that culturally incongruent metaphors require greater cognitive effort. A rigorous design should control for confounds that may independently affect metaphor comprehension. Familiarity and conventionality, in particular, should be normed and matched across conditions, because familiar or conventional metaphors may be processed more efficiently regardless of cultural-script compatibility. Other variables, such as lexical frequency, stimulus length, semantic relatedness, and syntactic complexity, should likewise be matched or statistically controlled, as should language proficiency and participant characteristics such as age and education in bilingual or second-language studies. Where exact matching is not feasible, these variables should be pretested and included as covariates in mixed-effects models. Such controls would help ensure that any observed mismatch effects cannot be more parsimoniously attributed to differences in familiarity, conventionality, proficiency, or linguistic complexity.Critically, the predicted interaction would be reflected in a smaller mismatch cost for highly embodied metaphors than for less embodied metaphors across these measures. Highly embodied metaphors may show reduced mismatch costs because their bodily basis provides relatively robust experiential grounding, whereas lowembodied metaphors may show greater mismatch costs when culturally specific interpretive knowledge becomes more influential. This interactional prediction can be tested across different metaphorical domains, allowing researchers to delineate the linguistic scope and boundary conditions within which cultural scripts exert their influence. Available experimental evidence, though limited, is consistent with this outlook. Most directly, Chen, Lv, and Chen (2025) found that interpreting culturally incongruent L2 metaphors requires greater inhibitory control than congruent ones.These findings collectively suggest that cultural scripts may exert their influence not merely at the level of conventionalized linguistic patterns but also at the level of online conceptual integration, a process that is effortful and resource-dependent. If experimentally corroborated, the dual-dimension framework would make several significant contributions. The novel prediction of the present framework is therefore that embodied grounding moderates the processing cost associated with cultural mismatch: culturally incongruent metaphors should incur greater processing costs, but this mismatch cost should be attenuated when the metaphor has stronger embodied grounding. If supported by future cross-linguistic experiments, this interaction would provide evidence for a more integrated account of metaphor processing in which cultural-linguistic variation operates within, rather than independently of, embodied constraints. In this sense, the framework treats cultural specificity not as noise or exception but as a central explanatory. Methodologically, it would advance the metaphor study of cognitive linguistics toward an experimentally grounded science, bridging corpus-based description with deeper process-oriented explanation. Practically, the framework could provide an empirical basis for second-language pedagogy by helping teachers identify metaphors that require explicit cultural instruction. For example, when an L2 metaphor is highly culturally specific but weakly embodied, instruction could first establish any relevant literal or embodied association, then explicitly introduce the cultural script that licenses the metaphorical interpretation, receive different cultural interpretations across languages. A subsequent comprehension task could assess whether learners have successfully integrated the embodied mapping with the relevant cultural knowledge. In this way, the framework suggests that metaphors should not be taught merely as isolated lexical expressions, but as mappings grounded in embodied experience and further shaped by culturally specific scripts. The same distinction could also inform cross-cultural communication and translation by helping identify whether a metaphor's interpretation depends primarily on shared embodied grounding or on culture-specific knowledge.In conclusion, this article proposes a theoretically specified and psychologically testable experimental agenda for investigating the two-dimensional framework of metaphor comprehension. By distinguishing embodied grounding from culturally mediated interpretation and translating these dimensions into experimentally testable constructs, the framework provides a basis for examining how embodied and cultural factors may jointly shape metaphor processing. Its primary contribution, therefore, lies not in establishing the empirical validity of cultural scripts, which remains to be demonstrated, but in specifying a set of theoretically motivated predictions that can be subjected to experimental testing. However, the proposed interaction between embodied grounding and cultural-script match, as well as the generalizability of this distinction across languages and cultural contexts, remains empirically unresolved.
Source: Frontiers in Psychology
Author: Xunian Wang
Institutions: Zhaoqing University, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies
Language: English
Subfield: Linguistics and Language
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $3,801
OpenAlex ID: W7225658477