The metaphor: a bridge between language and perceptual experience

Many metaphors use the expressive properties of events and things that surround us for giving names to mental contents otherwise difficult to shape linguistically. Aim of this paper is to discuss a viewpoint according to which literal language is fundamentally inadequate to describe the qualities and the nuances of many of our perceptions and body experiences (be they, visual, haptic, kinesthetic and so on). To capture the perceptual and experiential complexity of the world we live in, language has to be stretched and hence used metaphorically to increase its descriptive and communicative force. Metaphors provide a way to filling the gap between the complexity of the perceptual world and the limitations of our linguistic repertoire to mean it.