Primary metaphors and monomodal visual metaphors

Grady's Primary Metaphor Theory has focused almost exclusively on verbal corpora. Even though the possibility of non-verbal expression is considered, there is very little research on the matter. In order to study the human mind, there is no doubt that the information given by verbal language is critical, but it is also necessary to analyze other corpora, as these could provide invaluable data which would confirm or modify the conclusions drawn. In addition to this, authors who deal with visual metaphors rarely follow Primary Metaphor Theory. If primary metaphors are part of our cognitive unconscious, inherent to the human being and a direct consequence of the nature of the brain (Grady, 1997), they must also be present in the visual corpus. In this article, a series of examples are given and discussed in order to support this statement.