Metaphors Octopi Live By?

A Cognitive Zoosemiotic Survey on Behavioral Mimicry as Evolutionary Contribution to Conceptual Metaphor Theory

Abstract

I adopt Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) as a cognitive linguistic concept in a zoosemiotic framework to study behavioral polymorphic deception in Thaumoctopus Mimicus. This offers new analytical tools to zoosemiotics and may inform and underpin CMT from an evolutionary standpoint. The lack of studies on metaphorical thought in non-human animals, despite urgent calls for more diverse multimodal examples exbodying cross-domain mappings, reveals a strong anthropocentric bias in cognitive linguistics. A comprehensive theory of language, however, should be consistent from a diachronic and phylogenetic angle.

The paper addresses how and for what metaphor, as an embodied cognitive phenomenon, may have emerged evolutionarily. It is posited that metaphor could have been present in animals before it became engrained in verbal language. This possibility is particularly relevant if we consider that lexical knowledge is not a prerequisite for metaphoric meaning-making, as the basic claim of CMT. I discuss that findings indicating embodied metaphoric processes in animals provide substantiation for cross-domain mappings as residing in cognitive systems.