Abstract

I am going to attempt to argue, given certain premises, there are reasons, not only empirical, but also logical, for expecting a certain division of labor in the processing of information by the human brain. This division of labor consists specifically of a functional bifurcation into what may be called, to a first approximation, "verbal" and "nonverbal" modes of information- processing. That this dichotomy is not quite satisfactory, however, will be one of the principal conclusions of this chapter, for I shall attempt to show that metaphor, which in its most common guise is a literary, and hence a fortiori a "verbal" phenomenon, may in fact be more a function of the "nonverbal" than the "verbal" mode. (For alternative attempts to account for cognitive lateralization, see e.g. Bever, 1975; Wickelgren, 1975; Pendse, 1978.).