What is it about?
Cognition is grounded in context. This article explores how music experts and non-experts cognize and verbalize the attributes of musical sounds. The study demonstrates that music professionals conceive of such sounds through synesthetic metaphor. The results also demonstrate that musical expertise can lead to the emergence of synesthetic metaphors that are specific to musical discourse.
Why is it important?
Synesthesia was thought to be a purely neurological phenomenon. However, this study shows that this phenomenon can have a learning component and can arise in certain professional contexts; at least this is what the analysis of the use of language in the context of music shows. That is, experts and non-experts can cognize and verbalize certain specialized phenomena, such as musical sounds, through synesthetic metaphor.