Image schema is a recurring structure of, or within, our cognitive processes, which establishes patterns of understanding and reasoning. Image schemas emerge from our bodily interactions, linguistic experience and historical context. The term is explained in Mark Johnson's book The Body in the Mind, in case study 2 of George Lakoff's Women, Fire and Dangerous Things and by Rudolf Arnheim in Visual Thinking. Mark L. Johnson is Knight Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Oregon. ... George P. Lakoff (, born 1941) is a professor of linguistics (in particular, cognitive linguistics) at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 1972. ... Rudolf Arnheim (born July 15, 1904) is a German-born author, art and film theorist, and perceptual psychologist. ...

In contemporary cognitive linguistics, an image schema is considered an embodied prelinguistic structure of experience that motivates conceptual metaphor mappings. Evidence for image schemas is drawn from a number of related disciplines, including work on cross-modal cognition in psychology, from spatial cognition in both linguistics and psychology, and from neuroscience. In linguistics and cognitive science, cognitive linguistics (CL) refers to the currently dominant school of linguistics that views the important essence of language as innately based in evolutionarily-developed and speciated faculties, and seeks explanations that advance or fit well into the current understandings of the human mind. ... Conceptual metaphor: In cognitive linguistics, metaphor is defined as understanding one conceptual domain in terms of another conceptual domain; for example, using one persons life experience to understand a different persons experience. ...

See also:

• schema (psychology)
• cognitive linguistics
• conceptual metaphor
• embodied philosophy
• Mark Johnson

In psychology and cognitive science, a schema is a mental structure that represents some aspect of the world. ... In linguistics and cognitive science, cognitive linguistics (CL) refers to the currently dominant school of linguistics that views the important essence of language as innately based in evolutionarily-developed and speciated faculties, and seeks explanations that advance or fit well into the current understandings of the human mind. ... Conceptual metaphor: In cognitive linguistics, metaphor is defined as understanding one conceptual domain in terms of another conceptual domain; for example, using one persons life experience to understand a different persons experience. ... Embodied philosophy (also known as the embodied mind thesis, embodied cognition or the embodied cognition thesis) usually refers to a set of beliefs promoted by George Lakoff and his various co-authors (including Mark Johnson, Mark Turner, and Rafael E. Núñez), which suggest that the mind can only be... There are different people named Mark Johnson: Mark Johnson (professor), linguistics professor Mark Johnson (footballer), Australian rules footballer for Essendon Mark Johnson (film producer) Mark Johnson (umpire), baseball umpire Mark Johnson (hockey), hockey player Mark Johnson (rugby), rugby player Mark Johnson (musician) Mark Johnson (football club director), director of Portsmouth...

External links

Image schemata in the brain is a recent book chapter by Tim Rohrer which explores the evidence from cognitive neuroscience and cognitive science for the neural underpinnings of image schemas