Metaphors to Survive by

Mimicry as Biometaphors, Embodiment of Sign and Cognitive Tools (not only) in Animals?

Abstract

Can Cognitive Metaphor Theory (CMT) be applied productively to the study of mimicry in zoosemiotics and ethology? In this theoretical comparison of selected case studies, I would like to propose that biological mimicry is a type of biosemiotic metaphor. At least two major parallels between cognitive metaphors in human cognition and mimicry among animals justify viewing the two phenomena as isomorphic. First—from the semiotic point of view—the argument is that both metaphor and mimicry are cases of semiotic transfer (etymologically: metaphor) of the identity / sign of the source onto the perceived identity / sign of the target. This identity transfer, in turn, triggers appropriate changes in the response (behavior) of the surrounding (human or animal) interpreters (e.g. predators). Semiotically, the mimicry turns the body of its bearer into a sign of something else, resulting in the interpreters’ (e.g. predators’) perception of species X as species Y—hence, a type of embodied sign and cognitive metaphor. Second, ecologically, a species occupying one niche (e.g. a moth: non-venomous, herbivorous primary consumer) is perceived and identified as an occupant of a different niche (e.g. a hornet: venomous, omnivorous predator). Thus, a potential predator’s Umwelt is affected by its perceiving a hornet moth as “a hornet” where there is, in fact, a moth, and its response to this stimulus will not be predation but avoidance. In terms of CMT, we could call this a biosemiotic metaphor (bio-metaphor), e.g. “A MOTH IS A HORNET” or “PREY IS A PREDATOR”. Further correspondences between mimicry and metaphor include the fact that this bio-metaphorical identification by mimicry does not typically require a “perfect” resemblance between the source and the target sign (or species); this seems to correspond to the prototype categorization in CMT where categories are “open-ended” and only a partial similarity is sufficient for metaphorical identification (compare Lakoff, Johnson 1980; Rosch 1983). Such an identification of mimicry as metaphor could be based on Prodi’s argument that “hermeneutics is not a late product of culture, but the same elementary movement of life that is born because something obscurely interprets something else” (Eco 2018: 350; Kull 2018, 352—364). Inasmuch as animal Umwelten are interconnected inter alia by this natural hermeneutics, the trans-disciplinary approach to the study eco-zoosemiotic interpretants on the basis of metaphor-mimicry isomorphism could open new opportunities in comparative studies of semiosis in human and animal cognition and interactions.