Fear

Abstract

In the previous chapter we saw how the two systems of metonymies and metaphors jointly produce the prototypical cognitive model of anger. In this chapter I would like to show what it would mean if only one of these systems were taken into account in our effort to reconstruct the prototypical model of fear; in particular, what it would mean to base the reconstruction on the metonymic system of fear alone. I will try to demonstrate that the result would be a drastic loss of conceptual content. The reason why I have chosen to show the poverty of the metonymic—as opposed to the metaphoric—system in the production of prototypical cognitive models is not completely arbitrary, especially not in the case of fear. Fear is often defined as a dangerous situation accompanied by a set of physiological and behavioral reactions that typically ends in flight. While this (in our terms) metonymy-based definition of the folk understanding of fear is correct so far as it goes, it does not tell us the whole story of fear. That is mostly provided by the metaphors. The poverty of an exclusively metonymy-based model will be evident by the end of the chapter.