Synaestesia: character and nature

This essay tries to study synaestesia with a cognitive approach to the structure of language. Its theoretical framework is provided by Joseph Stern (semantician), Stefan Ulmann (linguist), and Osgood (psychologist).The author tries to explain the symbolic nature of this linguistic phenomenon as well as the speaker’s perceptional process while using it, and its emotional and mental effects on them. When explained the formation process of synaestesia, we will study it as a neurological and perceptional category. Then, we will provide some examples from Persian literature to clarify the structure of synaestesia. At last, we will come to rethinking synaestesia in art and linguistic phenomena (poetry and prose). According to the finding of the research, synaestesias is a metaphor in which a particular meaning, common to a given perceptional domain, projects to another domain to which it no longer is usual. The basis of such a transition is a kind of similarity and interference between the two domains. In general, this possibility comes from man’s selective system of thinking and his capability to use metaphor. That is why it is frequently seen in different fields of art, including cinema, painting and music. Literary schools use synaestesia differently, not just for creating images, but to communicate special meaning, and to impress the audience.