Psychological Studies in Metaphor Processing: Extensions to the Placement of Terms in Semantic Space

Abstract

Psychological-processing models force theorist to posit a model of representation of knowledge in permanent memory and of type of mental operations that one can apply to this knowledge. This paper describes one such model in detail. Experimental tests of model are described to illustrate range of phenomena being studied, as reflected in psychological literature, and those domains of theory that are most in need of further development. The psychological investigation of metaphor can be conceptualized as encompassing three separable (but overlapping) areas of cognitive research. The first can be labeled problem; question addressed here is how we recognize an utterance as figurative (and not as literally true or a sentential anomaly). In other words, why do we treat such a sentence as cars are differently than such a sentence as cats are beliefs? The second area can be labeled problem. The focus here is not on metaphor itself, but on extended context in would like to acknowledge Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (Grant A7040) for their support of this research. Thanks are also due to Dr. Mary Walsh for her helpful comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript. Poetics Today 13:4 (Winter 1992). Copyright ? 1992 by The Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics. CCC 0333-5372/92/$2.50. This content downloaded from 207.46.13.129 on Mon, 18 Apr 2016 06:36:18 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 608 Poetics Today 13:4 which metaphor is embedded. The assumption of researchers working in this tradition is that pragmatic principles (activated by context) determine whether or not a given utterance is figurative and, even if figurative, determine nature of non-literal interpretation. Thus a statement such as all men are animals (1) will be interpreted literally if embedded in context of a biology class, metaphorically if presented by one student to her roommate after an unhappy relationship, and, perhaps, as ironic if said by same student about a man whom she thinks too effeminate. How sentence is used becomes prime focus of study. The third area can be labeled computation problem. Even if we recognize that a figurative meaning is intended by a speaker, we must still compute intended meaning. That is, even if we recognized that intent of statement relating cars to lemons or men to animals is to comment on a characteristic of cars or men, how do we represent such concepts as car and lemon so that nature of relationship can be specified? It is this area of research that has dominated interest of cognitive scientists and that will be my focus here. Following a brief discussion of representational characteristics, will examine how adoption of a given representational scheme has psychologically testable implications. In concluding, will discuss issues raised for computational approaches by recognition and context problems. The Representation of Concepts and Metaphor Computation To give you a feel for distinction between recognition and computation, let me give you as an example a comment made by my daughter when she was five years old. She had asked me to buy her a toy that thought looked better than it was. When told her that the grass is greener on other side, she hesitated, looked at me, and said, I know you are using an expression, but what does it mean? My daughter, while unique in many ways, is apparently not unique in distinguishing between intended non-literalness of a statement and actual meaning one intends to convey: Ellen Winner (1988) reports that, in general, children can often recognize that non-literal meaning is intended before they can interpret it. How, then, do we compute intended meaning? The traditional approach to this question taken by cognitive scientists has been to assume what Allen Newell (1980) has called physical symbol system, namely, that mind consists of symbols that can stand for objects and events in world and that, when combined in This content downloaded from 207.46.13.129 on Mon, 18 Apr 2016 06:36:18 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Katz * Metaphor Processing 609 order, can produce new symbol systems.' Consequently, to understand metaphor comprehension (and any other intelligent activity) one has to have a model of representation of knowledge in permanent memory and of type of mental operations that one can apply to this knowledge. Early models of this sort assumed representation of each concept to consist of a set of features and problem of metaphor to be one of identifying features shared by different concepts (see Malgady and Johnson 1980). Consider, for instance, sentence