Motivating primary metaphors
Like the more general framework of Conceptual Metaphor Theory, Primary Metaphor Theory assumes that primary metaphors are unidirectional. However, because primary metaphors involve the association of a target and a source that are equally basic and are derived from real and directly apprehended experiences, there must be a different explanation for the unidirectionality: for what makes a source a source and a target a target. Recall that the earlier view in Conceptual Metaphor Theory was that target concepts (or domains) were more abstract than the source concept (or domain), and that the source provided the target with structure that made it possible to think and talk about these abstract concepts.
In Primary Metaphor Theory, the mapping from source to target is explained in the following terms: because primary target concepts relate to subjective responses, they operate at a level of cognitive processing to which we have low conscious access. Primary target concepts are responses and evaluations, which derive from background operations (an idea that we illustrate below). According to this view, the function of primary metaphor is to structure primary target con cepts in terms of sensory images in order to foreground otherwise backgrounded cognitive operations. This is achieved by employing source concepts that are more accessible because they relate to sensory rather than subjective experience. Primary source concepts, which derive from external sensory experience, are said to have image content while primary target concepts, which are more evaluative and hence subjective in nature, are said to have response content.
Recall example (25), which illustrates the primary metaphor SIMILARITY IS NEARNESS. The target concept SIMILARITY relates to a covert (background) process of evaluation that is intrinsic to judgement. For instance, when we look at two people’s faces and judge that they have similar appearances and might therefore be members of the same family, the cognitive operations that allow us to identify these similarities are part of the background. What is important or salient to us are the faces themselves and our resulting judgement of their similarity. While the concept NEARNESS is derived from sensory experience, the concept SIMILARITY relates to a subjective evaluation produced by mechanisms that are typically covert, or at least operate at a relatively low level of conscious access.
