Multisensory perception and tactile metaphors for voice in the work of Herta Muller

Abstract

In this article, I examine tactile metaphors for voice in the work of Herta Müller. I use conceptual metaphor theory and consider the process of multisensory perception to argue that tactile metaphors can activate multiple senses. Müller evokes tactile experience to reason about voice in her works. These seemingly modality-specific metaphors relate voice to more than one sensory impression. While multisensory perception enables the author to associate her characters’ voices creatively with different sensory phenomena, it simultaneously problematizes scholarly efforts to analyze metaphorical language and categorize figurative associations according to sensory modalities. In her literary works, tactile metaphors for voice appear well-established and even conventional, but Müller defamiliarizes them and foregrounds a metaphorical reading of tactile language. Since analytical reasoning about metaphors can be problematic because of multisensory perception, Müller’s works can be challenging to interpret as she focuses the reader’s attention on the figurative meaning of language.