The Many Faces of Creativity: Exploring Synaesthesia through a Metaphorical Lens (Elements in Cognitive Linguistics)

It has been suggested that the study of synaesthesia can provide insights into the ability and propensity to produce creative metaphor. In this Element, the authors compare the written descriptions of sensory and emotional experiences produced by twenty synaesthetes and twenty non-synaesthetes, and explore the characteristics of their writing, particularly as they relate to metaphor. Their findings show that synaesthetes have a greater propensity to produce creative cross-sensory metaphor than non-synaesthetes, and they identify a number of factors that are associated with creative metaphor production. Their findings provide insights into the nature of creativity as it relates to metaphor, emotion, and embodied experience. They argue that the production of creative metaphor arises from strong affective reactions to sensory and emotional stimuli and that there is an embodied symbiotic relationship between sensory experiences, embodiment, emotion, hyperbole, empathy, metaphor and creativity.