Metaphorical Sentences Research Articles

Metaphors Expressing Emotions in Lisa Kleypas’s Rainshadow Road Novel

Metaphors have been always interesting to explore since they are able to represent many things, one of which is feelings. Article examined the metaphorical sentences which expressed emotions found in Lisa Kleypas’s the Rainshadow Road. Library research was conducted to find the kinds of emotions which were expressed by the metaphorical sentences. It was also done to figure out what the metaphors refered to. Another objective was to reveal the most dominant emotion which appeared through the metaphors expressed in the novel. The analysis used metaphor theory to compare the dictionary meaning and the metaphorical one. The result shows that there are various emotions which are expressed through the metaphorical sentences. Happiness is found as the most dominant emotion which appears in the novel.

Element Order in Metaphorical and Literal Phrases

The present study examines the role of a noun’s concreteness in determining the order of nouns within literal and metaphorical conjunction constructions. Two experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1, 45 participants were asked to recall sentences with canonic and non-canonic order. In Experiment 2, 41 participants performed a lexical decision task to the final word of a canonic or non-canonic sentence. The results show that concreteness plays an important role in recalling word order in both literal and metaphorical sentences. In addition, canonic metaphorical sentences were processed faster than were non-canonic metaphorical sentences. Our findings suggest that concreteness affects element order in conjunction constructions but that the effect of concreteness is more pronounced in metaphorical phrases. These findings are discussed in the context of the class inclusion framework (Glucksberg & Keysar, 1990).

Metaphor and Theological Realism

In this paper, I argue that there are indispensable and irreducible metaphors in religious language and that this does not threaten a realist interpretation of religion. I first sketch a realist theory of religious language and argue that we cannot avoid addressing the problems metaphor poses to semantics. I then give a brief account of what it means for a metaphorical sentence to be true and how metaphors can refer to something even if what they mean is not expressible in literal terms. Finally, I discuss how this realist theory of metaphor influences our understanding of negative theology and gives a new perspective on religious pluralism.

A pilot investigation of “metaphor blindness” in a college student population

Previous research from our group suggests that patients with lesions in the left inferior parietal lobule (IPL)—which is concerned with abstract numerical cognition and cross-modal association (which is consistent with its strategic location at the crossroads between the temporal, parietal and occipital lobes) have difficulty understanding proverbs and metaphors (Ramachandran and Hubbard, 2001). In the current pilot investigation, we report “metaphor blindness” in a college student population; that is, either the complete inability or difficulty for otherwise intellectually non-challenged individuals to comprehend metaphors of language. Participants (N=205) read 12 metaphorical (“The detective jumped at the clue”) and 12 literal (“The accident was a fall”) sentences and had to decide whether the sentences conveyed a metaphorical or literal meaning. The mean accuracy for these metaphorical sentences was 11.0 (SD=2.3; RNG=0–12); the mean accuracy for literal sentences was 7.2 (SD=1.8; RNG=2–10). We found that 5% of participants (11/205) were unable or had difficulty understanding metaphors (i.e., were statistical outliers), while their score for literal sentences felt within a normal statistical range M=8.3 (SD=2.3; RNG=5–10). Follow-up control procedures were conducted in order to help ascertain that the results were not due to low verbal IQ and task difficulty. Likewise, none of the “metaphor blind” participants reported any psychiatric or neurological histories that would impair language comprehension, including strokes, brain injuries, language problems dyslexia, and signs of late language onset. The results are very preliminary and future studies are needed to confirm these findings. We suggest that brain modules may be specialized even for subtle functions like metaphor and their formation in embryogenesis may be controlled by small handfuls of genes whose expression can go awry—as in “metaphor blindness”.

Conceptual Metaphor Interpretation in Iranian Students of English as a Foreign Language

This research investigated interpretation of the second language metaphor in Persian-English bilinguals within the theory of conceptual metaphor founded by Lackoff and Johnson (1980). Because of the complex construction ground and cultural variance of conceptual metaphors, interpretation of some novel sentences or even ordinary language causes confusion to second language learners. Sixteen English metaphorical sentences based on four generic conceptual metaphors were selected and presented in a test paper with a forced-choice task and an explanatory task. Fourty Adults with different English proficiency level participated in the experiment. Results show that L2 proficiency poses effect on metaphor interpretation. Participants with higher English proficiency had better performance. Apart from English proficiency, different perceptions on ordinary experience and L1 and L2 lexicon size among individuals play a role in the metaphor interpretation process. Although the present study primarily aims at investigating personal properties taking part in the process, context in sentences is found to affect some subjects’ choices.

THE USE OF METAPHOR IN BARACK OBAMA’S INAUGURATION SPEECH

This study is aimed to elaborate the uniqueness of Barack Obama‘s inaugural speech when he has been sworn in as the 44th US president at 20 January 2009. This research is a (qualitative) bibliographical study. The object of the study is the analysis of the use of metaphor in Barrack Obama‘s speech. There are 23 sentences chosen to represent all the metaphorical sentences of Obama‘s speech being the object of the study. Having analyzed the data by the perspective of George Lakoff and Johnson‘s conceptual metaphor, the researcher can draw a conclusion that Obama has effectively and creatively used metaphorical expressions in convincing his people about his future plans. His remarkable speech discussing how to solve the great scale of the economic mess that now confronts the US and the common feeling of the loss of national self-confidence.

Automatic metaphor processing in adults with Asperger syndrome: a metaphor interference effect task

This paper investigates automatic processing of novel metaphors in adults with Asperger Syndrome (AS) and typically developing controls. We present an experiment combining a semantic judgment task and a recognition task. Four types of sentences were compared: Literally true high-typical sentences, literally true low-typical sentences, apt metaphors, and scrambled metaphors (literally false sentences which are not readily interpretable as metaphors). Participants were asked to make rapid decisions about the literal truth of such sentences. The results revealed that AS and control participants showed significantly slower RTs for metaphors than for scrambled metaphors and made more mistakes in apt metaphoric sentences than in scrambled metaphors. At the same time, there was higher recognition of apt metaphors compared with scrambled metaphors. The findings indicate intact automatic metaphor processing in AS and replicate previous findings on automatic metaphor processing in typically developing individuals.

Processing of Conventional and Novel Conceptual Metaphors by Korean L2 Learners of English: An ERP Study

The processing of conventional and novel conceptual metaphorical sentences by Korean L2 learners of English were examined with event-related potentials (ERPs). The four experimental conditions adopted from Lai et al. (2009) were used in this study; two factors such as [familiar] and [interpretable] produced literal, conventional metaphoric, novel metaphoric, and anomalous sentences. In particular, conventional metaphors were constructed based on the Contemporary Theory of Metaphor and were familiar and readily interpretable. Novel metaphors were unfamiliar and harder to interpret. We compared ERPs elicited by the same target word that ends all the four conditions. Amplitudes of the N400 ERP component (280-400 ms) were more negative for conventional metaphors, novel metaphors, and anomalous sentences, compared with literal sentences. Within the late window (400-520 ms), ERPs associated with the first three conditions remained to be more negative than the last literal sentences. The results showed that Korean learners of English were able to differentiate conventional metaphors from literal sentences in the early window, but were not able to resolve conventional metaphors meaningfully in the late window.

An Irenic Idea about Metaphor

AbstractDonald Davidson notoriously rejected ‘metaphorical meaning’ and denied the existence of linguistic mechanisms by which metaphorical significance is conveyed. He contended that the meanings metaphorical sentences have are just their literal meanings, though metaphorical utterances may brute-causally have important cognitive effects. Contrastingly, John Searle offers a Gricean account of metaphor as an elaborated kind of implicature, and defends metaphorical meaning as speaker-meaning. Each of those positions is subject to very telling objections from the other's point of view. This paper proposes a synthesis that combines the respective virtues of Davidson's and Searle's accounts and avoids all the objections to each.

The influence of context on hemispheric recruitment during metaphor processing.

Although the left hemisphere's prominence in language is well established, less emphasis has been placed on possible roles for the right hemisphere. Behavioral, patient, and neuroimaging research suggests that the right hemisphere may be involved in processing figurative language. Additionally, research has demonstrated that context can modify language processes and facilitate comprehension. Here we investigated how figurativeness and context influenced brain activation, with a specific interest in right hemisphere function. Previous work in our laboratory indicated that novel stimuli engaged right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and that both novel and familiar metaphors engaged right IFG and right temporal pole. The graded salience hypothesis proposes that context may lessen integration demands, increase the salience of metaphors, and thereby reduce right hemisphere recruitment for metaphors. In the present study, fMRI was used to investigate brain function, whereas participants read literal and metaphoric sentences that were preceded by either a congruent or an incongruent literal sentence. Consistent with prior research, all sentences engaged traditional left hemisphere regions. Differences between metaphors and literal sentences were observed, but only in the left hemisphere. In contrast, a main effect of congruence was found in the right IFG, the right temporal pole, and the dorsal medial pFC. Partially consistent with the graded salience hypothesis, our results highlight the strong influence of context on language, demonstrate the importance of the right hemisphere in discourse, and suggest that, in a wider discourse context, congruence has a greater influence on right hemisphere recruitment than figurativeness.

The Neural Career of Sensory-motor Metaphors

The role of sensory-motor systems in conceptual understanding has been controversial. It has been proposed that many abstract concepts are understood metaphorically through concrete sensory-motor domains such as actions. Using fMRI, we compared neural responses with literal action (Lit; The daughter grasped the flowers), metaphoric action (Met; The public grasped the idea), and abstract (Abs; The public understood the idea) sentences of varying familiarity. Both Lit and Met sentences activated the left anterior inferior parietal lobule, an area involved in action planning, with Met sentences also activating a homologous area in the right hemisphere, relative to Abs sentences. Both Met and Abs sentences activated the left superior temporal regions associated with abstract language. Importantly, activation in primary motor and biological motion perception regions was inversely correlated with Lit and Met familiarity. These results support the view that the understanding of metaphoric action retains a link to sensory-motor systems involved in action performance. However, the involvement of sensory-motor systems in metaphor understanding changes through a gradual abstraction process whereby relatively detailed simulations are used for understanding unfamiliar metaphors, and these simulations become less detailed and involve only secondary motor regions as familiarity increases. Consistent with these data, we propose that anterior inferior parietal lobule serves as an interface between sensory-motor and conceptual systems and plays an important role in both domains. The similarity of abstract and metaphoric sentences in the activation of left superior temporal regions suggests that action metaphor understanding is not completely based on sensory-motor simulations but relies also on abstract lexical-semantic codes.

Recent developments in metaphor theory

Several scholars have proposed alternative views to conceptual metaphor theory (see, for example, Ortony, 1993; Barnden, 2006; Wilson and Carston, 2006, 2008; Vega, 2007; Gibbs, 2008). How are the modified, refined, and alternative theories related to each other and standard conceptual metaphor theory, and which theory provides the best account of the phenomenon of metaphor? The particular approaches I will consider in this paper include the theory of metaphor as categorization, standard conceptual metaphor theory, blending theory, the neural theory of metaphor, conceptual metaphor theory as based on the idea of main meaning focus, and relevance theory. I will present the various theories through the analysis of a single metaphorical sentence: This surgeon is a butcher. I will propose that conceptual metaphor theory as based on the idea of the main meaning focus gives us a good way of characterizing the emergence of the sentence’s meaning. This characterization consists of a four-stage process. First, there exist two independent conceptual categories: BUTCHERY and SURGERY. Second, due to the similarity between the two, a metaphorical relationship is established between them. Third, the property of incompetence emerges in the concept of BUTCHERY in light of and against the background of the concept of SURGERY. Fourth, this property is projected into the blend, in which the property will now characterize the surgeon. I will point out that this approach is compatible with several other views, such as Ruiz de Mendoza’s Combined Input Hypothesis and with aspects of relevance theory.

Metaphor Aptness and Conventionality: A Processing Fluency Account

Conventionality and aptness are two dimensions of metaphorical sentences thought to play an important role in determining how quick and easy it is to process a metaphor. Conventionality reflects the familiarity of a metaphor whereas aptness reflects the degree to which a metaphor vehicle captures important features of a metaphor topic. In recent years it has become clear that operationalizing these two constructs is not as simple as asking naïve raters for subjective judgments. It has been found that ratings of aptness and conventionality are highly correlated, which has led some researchers to pursue alternative methods for measuring the constructs. Here, in four experiments, we explore the underlying reasons for the high correlation in ratings of aptness and conventionality, and question the construct validity of various methods for measuring the two dimensions. We find that manipulating the processing fluency of a metaphorical sentence by means of familiarization to similar senses of the metaphor (“in vivo conventionalization”) influences ratings of the sentence's aptness. This misattribution may help explain why subjective ratings of aptness and conventionality are highly correlated. In addition, we find other reasons to question the construct validity of conventionality and aptness measures: for instance, we find that conventionality is context dependent and thus not attributable to a metaphor vehicle alone, and we find that ratings of aptness take more into account than they should.

The influence of sentence novelty and figurativeness on brain activity

The predominance of the left hemisphere in language comprehension and production is well established. More recently, the right hemisphere's contribution to language has been examined. Clinical, behavioral, and neuroimaging research support the right hemisphere's involvement in metaphor processing. But, there is disagreement about whether metaphors, in and of themselves, engage the right hemisphere or if other factors that vary between metaphors and literal language elicit right hemisphere engagement. It is important to disambiguate these issues to improve our basic knowledge of figurative language processing, to more precisely define how the right hemisphere supports language, and to facilitate our ability to understand and treat language impairments. Here we investigated the role of the right hemisphere in language comprehension with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) by manipulating familiarity in both literal and metaphoric sentences. In an event-related design, participants viewed English sentences that appeared every 4.5–9s, and to which they made a pleasantness judgment. All sentences elicited activation in traditional language brain regions including left inferior frontal gyrus, left anterior inferior temporal and left posterior middle temporal gyri. Overall, metaphors and novel stimuli elicited activation in bilateral inferior frontal gyri and left temporal regions. Additionally, metaphors elicited greater activation than literal sentences in right temporal pole. Although our results are partially consistent with the graded salience hypothesis and the coarse coding hypothesis, the right hemisphere's sensitivity to familiar metaphors suggests that right hemisphere recruitment is most influenced by semantic integration demands.

Stimulus design is an obstacle course: 560 matched literal and metaphorical sentences for testing neural hypotheses about metaphor.

Despite the ubiquity and importance of metaphor in thought and communication, its neural mediation remains elusive. We suggest that this uncertainty reflects, in part, stimuli that have not been designed with recent conceptual frameworks in mind or that have been hampered by inadvertent differences between metaphoric and literal conditions. In this article, we begin addressing these shortcomings by developing a large, flexible, extensively normed, and theoretically motivated set of metaphoric and literal sentences. On the basis of the results of three norming studies, we provide 280 pairs of closely matched metaphoric and literal sentences that are characterized along 10 dimensions: length, frequency, concreteness, familiarity, naturalness, imageability, figurativeness, interpretability, valence, and valence judgment reaction time. In addition to allowing for control of these potentially confounding lexical and sentential factors, these stimuli are designed to address questions about the role of novelty, metaphor type, and sensory-motor grounding in determining the neural basis of metaphor comprehension. Supplemental data for this article may be downloaded from http://brm.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.

Electrophysiological insights into the processing of nominal metaphors

We used event-related potentials (ERPs) to examine the time-course of processing metaphorical and literal sentences in the brain. ERPs were measured to sentence-final (Experiment 1) and mid-sentence (Experiment 2) critical words (CWs) as participants read and made plausibility judgments about familiar nominal metaphors (“A is a B”) as well as literal and semantically anomalous sentences of the same form. Unlike the anomalous words, which evoked a robust N400 effect (on the CW in experiments 1 and 2 as well as on the sentence-final word in experiment 2), CWs in the metaphorical, relative to the literal, sentences only evoked an early, localized N400 effect that was over by 400 ms after CW onset, suggesting that, by this time, their metaphorical meaning had been accessed. CWs in the metaphorical sentences also evoked a significantly larger LPC (Late Positive Component) than in the literal sentences. We suggest that this LPC reflected additional analysis that resolved a conflict between the implausibility of the literal sentence interpretation and the match between the metaphorical meaning of the CW, the context and stored information within semantic memory, resulting from early access to both literal and figurative meanings of the CWs.

The Effects of Metaphoricity and Presentation Style on Brain Activation During Text Comprehension

Evidence from neuroimaging studies suggests that the right hemisphere contributes significantly to the processing of 2-word metaphoric expressions, whereas metaphoric sentences activate mainly left hemispheric areas. Yet the pattern of brain activation during the processing of metaphors at the text level, beyond simple word pairs or sentences, is still unknown. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine brain activation patterns while 15 healthy participants read either 4-line metaphoric or nonmetaphorical texts. The findings indicate that both text types showed activation in the left and right posterior and anterior superior temporal gyri. Surprisingly, metaphoric texts resulted in significantly lower activation than nonmetaphoric texts in the anterior superior temporal gyri. The results are interpreted as indicating that presentation style affects brain activation, and that text processing may rely on a complicated interaction between metaphoricity (metaphoric, nonmetaphoric) and text presentation style (poetic, prosaic).

Gesture influences the processing of figurative language in non-native speakers: ERP evidence

Gestures should play a role in second language comprehension, given their importance in conveying contextual information. In this study, the N400 and the LPC were evaluated in a task involving the observation of videos showing utterances accompanied by gestures. Students studying advanced (G-High participants) and basic German (G-Low participants) as a second language were investigated. The utterance–gesture congruence and metaphoric meaning of content were manipulated during the task. As in previous ERP reports with native speakers, metaphorical expressions were sensitive to gestures. In G-Low participants, no modulation in the 300–500 ms window was observed, and only a modest effect was observed for the 500–700 ms window. More subtle differences of verbal expression were not processed in this group. Consistent with previous reports of the same paradigm with native speakers, the N400 from G-High group discriminated both congruent and incongruent gestures as well as literal and metaphorical sentences. Our results suggest that semantic processing is robust in the learning of a second language, although the amplitude modulation and latency of ERPs might depend on the speaker's proficiency level.

Bilateral Eye Movements, Attentional Flexibility and Metaphor Comprehension: The Substrate of REM Dreaming?

Explanations for the effects of the rapid eye movements induced during Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR; Shapiro, 2001) have drawn upon an analogy with the eye movements of REM sleep (Kuiken, Bears, Miall, and Smith, 2002). An extension of that analogy posits two orienting systems, one involving threat-fear related mnemonic contextualization and another involving loss-pain related monitoring of conflicting response alternatives. In a study involving individuals who had recently experienced significant loss or trauma, we found that experimentally induced saccadic eye movements decreased reaction times to unexpected stimuli among those reporting traumatic distress (characterized by hyperarousal and intrusive thoughts) and increased reaction times among those reporting separation distress (characterized by vivid reminiscences and the sense of a foreshortened future). Also, we found that saccadic eye movements increased the perceived strikingness of metaphoric sentence endings among those reporting amnesia for events related to either loss or trauma. The eye movements of both EMDR and REM sleep may differently affect the attentional and cognitive reorienting activity of those living with the consequences of loss or trauma. These differences may be evident in their waking reflections and in their dreams.

Comprehending conventional and novel metaphors: An ERP study

The neural mechanisms underlying the processing of conventional and novel conceptual metaphorical sentences were examined with event-related potentials (ERPs). Conventional metaphors were created based on the Contemporary Theory of Metaphor and were operationally defined as familiar and readily interpretable. Novel metaphors were unfamiliar and harder to interpret. Using a sensicality judgment task, we compared ERPs elicited by the same target word when it was used to end anomalous, novel metaphorical, conventional metaphorical and literal sentences. Amplitudes of the N400 ERP component (320–440 ms) were more negative for anomalous sentences, novel metaphors, and conventional metaphors compared with literal sentences. Within a later window (440–560 ms), ERPs associated with conventional metaphors converged to the same level as literal sentences while the novel metaphors stayed anomalous throughout. The reported results were compatible with models assuming an initial stage for metaphor mappings from one concept to another and that these mappings are cognitively taxing.