Linguistic Synaesthesia, Active Zones and Contextual Embedding – An Exemplary Analysis of Synaesthetic Expressions

Abstract

The present paper, based on the widely accepted literature, focuses initially on the definitions and modes of synaesthesia on the neuropsychological level. Further attention is paid to the definitions of linguistic synaesthesia. In the next section, the paper deals with the question of how the linguistic synaesthesia in general is approached, i.e. if it should be viewed as metaphor, metonymy or metaphtonymy. In the empirical part, one exemplary German sentence is analyzed in order to show that linguistic synaesthesia and especially its linguistic-conceptual nature should always be approached with strict consideration of the contextual embedding it occurs in.