DRAFT version. Final version published 2013: Compendium of Cognitive Linguistics Research Volume 2, Thomas Fuyin Li, ed., 189-200. 1 WHEN MY EYES ARE ON YOU, DO YOU TOUCH MY EYES? A RECLASSIFICATION OF METAPHORS MAPPING FROM PHYSICAL CONTACT TO PERCEPTION Karen Sullivan & Wendy Jiang University of Queensland, Australia ABSTRACT Many emotional and cognitive stimuli are perceived through the senses, especially through vision. As a result, metaphors mapping to THINKING or EMOTION often incidentally involve PERCEPTION. This does not mean that PERCEPTION is the target domain of the metaphors. In this paper, we present examples from English and Chinese to argue that the role of PERCEPTION in THINKING and EMOTION has led to the miscategorization of numerous metaphors as synaesthetic, when in fact they map to THINKING or EMOTION. Furthermore, we suggest that differences between the domains of THINKING and EMOTION lead to the supposed division between “PERCEPTION IS RECEPTION” and “PERCEIVING IS TOUCHING”, and we argue against the grouping of these under the heading of PERCEPTION IS CONTACT between a PERCEIVER and a PERCEIVED (Lakoff 1993). This reclassification has the additional advantage of a stricter and more explanatory delineation of the range of metaphors considered synaesthetic. Keywords: emotion, sensory modality, synaesthesia, synaesthetic metaphor 1. OVERGENERALIZATION IN PERCEPTION IS CONTACT The goal of Conceptual Metaphor Theory, like most areas of linguistics, is to seek generalizations that are both consistent with the data and that serve an explanatory function. Overgeneralization defeats both goals, in that it lumps together data that belong elsewhere and fails in explanatory functions such as the production of valid inferences, entailments and predictions about possible examples. For this reason, generalizations should always be questioned and tested, and if necessary, rejected in favour of more explanatory and better- fitting models. We suggest in this paper that a range of metaphors mapping from tactile contact to visual perception do not stand up to rigorous examination, and we propose alternate explanations for the linguistic examples attributed to these metaphors. The metaphors we will argue against include PERCEPTION IS RECEPTION (as in The view blew me away), and PERCEIVING IS TOUCHING (My eyes picked out every detail of the pattern), as well as the more general metaphor that purportedly connects these two, PERCEPTION IS CONTACT BETWEEN PERCEIVER AND PERCEIVED (hereafter called “PERCEPTION IS CONTACT”; all metaphors discussed in Lakoff 1993). We re-examine the range of examples attributed to PERCEPTION IS CONTACT, and conclude that only a few of Lakoff‟s examples in fact map to PERCEPTION, and that these map neither a PERCEIVER nor a PERCEIVED. Instead, these metaphors follow other synaesthetic metaphors in mapping only a scale of qualities (Petersen et al. 2008). As such, we see no reason to posit a special metaphor distinct from other synaesthetic metaphors to account for