What Do We Learn From Rating Metaphors?
Document Type
Conference Proceeding
Publication Date
2016
Published In
Proceedings Of The 38th Annual Conference Of The Cognitive Science Society
Abstract
What makes some metaphors easier to understand than others? Theoretical accounts of metaphor processing appeal to dimensions like conventionality and aptness to explain variability in metaphor comprehensibility. In a typical experiment, one group of naive participants rates a set of metaphoric sentences along these dimensions, while another is timed reading the same sentences. Then, the ratings are used to predict response times in order to identify the most relevant linguistic dimension for metaphor comprehension. However, surprisingly high correlations between ratings of theoretically orthogonal constructs and the results of an experiment in which a context manipulation affected ratings of metaphor conventionality and aptness suggest that these measures should be treated as dependent, rather than explanatory, variables. We discuss the implications of this perspective for theories of language processing.
Keywords
metaphor, analogy, measurement, conventionality, language
Published By
Cognitive Science Society
Editor(s)
A. Papafragou, Daniel J. Grodner, D. Mirman, And J. Trueswell
Conference
38th Annual Meeting Of The Cognitive Science Society
Conference Dates
August 10-13, 2016
Conference Location
Philadelphia, PA
Recommended Citation
Paul Henry Thibodeau , 06; L. Sikos; and Frank H. Durgin.
(2016).
"What Do We Learn From Rating Metaphors?".
Proceedings Of The 38th Annual Conference Of The Cognitive Science Society.
1769-1774.
https://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-psychology/919