“ The link between synesthesia and metaphor (Ramachandran & Hubbard, 2001b) has already been alluded to. The nature of the link remains elusive given that synesthesia involves arbitrarily connecting two unrelated things (e.g. color and number) whereas there is a non-arbitrary conceptual connection between Juliet and the sun. One potential solution to this problem comes from realizing that any given word only has a FINITE set of strong first order associations (sun = warm, nurturing, radiant, bright) surrounded by a penumbra of weaker second order associations (sun = yellow, flowers, beach, etc.) and third and fourth order associations that fade way like an echo.
—
Orders of metaphor? Then in that case there would be a lot of mileage charting this, to see how many there are at each order. I’d guess there would be many more at the higher orders, and a lot of interest in charting these (non-arbitrary, mind) associations.
