199 Conceptual metaphors of travel and stability people using them, frequently used metaphors – such as life is a journey and immobility is inner stability – may contribute to a ‘collective bias in understanding the world’.676 I return to the question asked in the beginning: does an analysis of conceptual metaphors further our understanding of Byzantine conceptions of mobility and immobility? While conceptual metaphors do not directly reflect ideas on mobility and immobility, they do reveal thought patterns that associate both positive (virtue) and negative (temptation) concepts with mobility and immobility. Moreover, the analysis reveals contradictory thought patterns, conceptions of virtue, connections between mobility, immobility and sainthood, and suggests parallels between metaphorical language use and the narrative. Using CMT to study metaphorical language enabled us to observe patterns in metaphorical language use. While another close reading approach might also have established these patterns, CMT makes the premises of the theory explicit: metaphors reflect and shape thinking. Supported by evidence from research in social psychology and neuroscience, CMT thus also allows us to draw conclusions based on the observance of patterns, namely that patterns reflect how language users think about the abstract target domains. In addition, CMT offers a possible explanation for contradictory thought patterns through primary metaphors and the connection between metaphors and embodied perception. The focus on one text enables us to find more linguistic metaphorical expressions, especially those for immobility which are expressed in multiple specific source domains (e.g., pillars and rocks), than could be found if opting for a key-word search in a large corpus. In addition, because the text was already studied from different perspectives, the analysis allows us to establish connections between the metaphorical language use and passages elsewhere in the narrative. 676 This view is expressed by Alice Deignan, who stresses that metaphors ‘have a normative and reinforcing effect, limiting our understanding as well as developing it’. Deignan (2005), p. 24. 4
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