a Three-Dimensional Model of Metaphor

Metaphor and Symbol, 2008

Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 1983

Two rating studies examined several dimensions of metaphorical sentences. A pool oj260 metaphors was constructed, all in the form "(noun phrase) is~are (noun phrase)." In Study 1 all of the items, and in Study 2, 98 of the items were evaluated on ten scales presumed to be important to the comprehension or interpretation of metaphors: semantic relatedness of the subject and predicate, comprehensibility, irnageability, imageability of the subject (topic), imageability of the predicate (vehicle), degree of metaphoricity, metaphor goodness, ease of interpretation, number of alternative interpretations, and felt familiarity of the metaphoric ground. Both experiments revealed the rated dimensions to be highly interrelated, but some analyses allowed evaluation of alternative predictions based on current theoretical approaches to metaphor quality and interpretation. The results indicated consistent but mixed support for the general poisitions under consideration as each appeared to have strong and weak areas of applicability. The interrelationships among the scales are discussed, together with implications of the findings for current theories and future metaphor research.

Recent interest in the nature of deliberate metaphor has demonstrated the need for a threedimensional model of metaphor. Metaphor is not just a matter of language and thought, but also of communication. How can this starting point be connected with a discourse-psychological framework for metaphor in which it is assumed that people have to represent metaphor as part of a number of complementary mental models for discourse? And how can this discourse-analytical approach be formalized in the five-step method for metaphor analysis going from language to thought: Can this method be adjusted to cater to the formal analysis of metaphor in communication as well, so that a distinction can be made between deliberate and non-deliberate metaphor in the five-step method? These are the questions addressed in this article.

Philosophy Compass, 2006

The most sustained and innovative recent work on metaphor has occurred in cognitive science and psychology. Psycholinguistic investigation suggests that novel, poetic metaphors are processed differently than literal speech, while relatively conventionalized and contextually salient metaphors are processed more like literal speech. This conflicts with the view of "cognitive linguists" like George Lakoff that all or nearly all thought is essentially metaphorical. There are currently four main cognitive models of metaphor comprehension: juxtaposition, category-transfer, feature-matching, and structural alignment. Structural alignment deals best with the widest range of examples; but it still fails to account for the complexity and richness of fairly novel, poetic metaphors.

*Center 'for the Study of Reading IL 'DESCRIPTORS ABSTRACT.

Journal of Literary Semantics, 1999

For a long time, metaphor has been considered "äs a sort of happy extra trick with words" (Richards, 1936: 90)-a device of the poetic Imagination in which the poet coats his feelings to bestow on the language in which they are wrapped a touch of beauty or unfamiliarity. Accordingly, it has been relegated within this tradition to an ancillary function of mere embellishment. It is only in the early 1970s that its Status started to be rethought, thanks to the progress made in the fields of the philosophy of language, psychology, linguistics, stylistics, discourse analysis, and pragmatics. This period has actually witnessed a proliferation of symposia and publications such äs Black's Models and Metaphors (1962), Shibles's Metaphor. Annotated BMography and History (1971), Sacks's On Metaphor (1979), Ortony's Metaphor and Thought (1979), and Lakoff & Johnson's Metaphors We Live Bj (1980), to name only a few. The outcome of this research has been the questioning of the view of metaphor äs an achievement of the unordinary mind. Hence, it has been claimed that "to be able to produce and understand metaphorical Statements is nothing to boast about" (Black, 1979: 181), and that "children do not learn to speak metaphorically äs a kind of crowning achievement in the apprenticeship of language learning" (Cohen & Margalit, 1972: 723). It has also been claimed that metaphor is not only not a mark of excellence, but also "an incurable infirmity of the human mind" 2 to perceive reality äs it is (Bally: 1951:188). The paper is divided into sections, each studying a pair of dualities. The justification for dealing with metaphor in these terms could be found in the nature of metaphor itself which has been claimed to be "no different from any other kind of duality of meaning" (Morgan, 1979: 139), such äs ambiguity, irony, and indirect Speech acts. The first section will be devoted to dealing with the review of the massive literature about metaphor and the framework. The second section includes the pair imagnation-rationaKty, which is at the heart of metaphor making and processing. The third pair, assertion-speech act, investigates the logical Status of metaphor, and argues that metaphor cannot be approached in terms of truth claims. The fourth couple, convention-intention, seeks to draw a line between what is conventional and what is intentional in metaphor. The fifth, Speaker meaning-sentence meaning exploits the traditional distinction between literal and figurative meaning to show the continuum between the two.

This paper outlines a multi-dimensional/multi-disciplinary framework for the study of metaphor. It expands on the cognitive linguistic approach to metaphor in language and thought by adding the dimension of communication, and it expands on the predominantly linguistic and psychological approaches by adding the discipline of social science. This creates a map of the field in which nine main areas of research can be distinguished and connected to each other in precise ways. It allows for renewed attention to the deliberate use of metaphor in communication, in contrast with non-deliberate use, and asks the question whether the interaction between deliberate and non-deliberate use of metaphor in specific social domains can contribute to an explanation of the discourse career of metaphor. The suggestion is made that metaphorical models in language, thought, and communication can be classified as official, contested, implicit, and emerging, which may offer new perspectives on the interaction between social, psychological, and linguistic properties and functions of metaphor in discourse. Keywords: metaphor, language, thought, communication, linguistics, psychology, social science

Psychological Bulletin, 1978

Metaphor plays a major role in our understanding of language and of the world we use language to talk about. Consequently, theories of language comprehension and of language itself are incomplete if they do not handle the phenomenon of metaphor, and they are inadequate if they cannot. Traditional definitions and theories of metaphor are reviewed. It is suggested that they err in equating metaphors with comparisons rather than merely implicating comparisons. Empirical research is reviewed, revealing, for the most part, serious problems, particularly in the developmental research. These problems often relate to inadequate underlying theories about the nature of metaphor. Other difficulties include inadequate