A relatively abstract conceptual representation that arises directly from our everyday interaction with and observation of the world around us. Image schemas derive from sensory and perceptual experience.

Accordingly, they derive from embodied experience.

For example, gravity ensures that unsupported objects fall to the ground; given the asymmetry of the human vertical axis, we have to stoop to pick up fallen objects, look in one direction (downwards) for fallen objects, and in another (upwards) for rising objects. In other words, our physiology ensures that our vertical axis, which interacts with gravity, gives rise to meaning as a result of how we interact with our environment.

According to Mark Johnson, the key proponent of the notion of the image schema, this aspect of our experience gives rise to the up-down image schema. In addition, and as shown by the developmental psychologist Jean Mandler, image schemas are emergent. That is because image schemas are functions of our bodies and of our interaction in the world, image schemas arise in conjunction with our physical and psychological development during early childhood via a process termed perceptual meaning analysis.

The term ‘image’ in ‘image schema’ is equivalent to the use of this term in psychology, where ‘imagistic ’ experience relates to and derives from our experience of the external world. Another term for this type of experience is sensory experience. The term ‘schema’ in ‘image schema’ means that image schemas are not rich or detailed concepts, but rather are abstract concepts consisting of patterns emerging from repeated instances of embodied experience. Image schemas provide the basis for more richly detailed lexical concept s. For example, the container image schema consists of the structural elements interior, boundary and exterior: these are the minimum requirements for a container.

Part of the meaning of the lexical concepts associated with the following forms: full, empty, in, out, etc., has to do with the container schema.

It has also been claimed by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in their work on metaphor that image schemas provide the basis for abstract thought by virtue of serving as the source domain in metaphoric mappings. The importance of image schemas is that they are held to provide the concrete basis for these metaphoric mappings. Consider the image schema physical object. This image schema is based on our everyday interaction with concrete objects like desks, chairs, tables, cars and so on. The image schema is a schematic representation emerging from embodied experience, which generalizes over what is common to objects: for example, that they have physical attributes such as color, weight, shape and so forth. This image schema can be ‘mapped onto’ an abstract entity like ‘inflation’, which lacks these physical properties. The consequence of this metaphoric mapping is that we now understand an abstract entity like ‘inflation’ in terms of a physical object. This is illustrated by examples such as the following: Inflation is giving the government a headache; Inflation makes me sick. A partial list of those image schemas which have been identified so far is given in Table 9.