Metaphor in the United States

Anna Kaal & Lettie Dorst

Vu research project: Metaphor in Discourse

• 5-year project headed by Gerard Steen

• Metaphor analysis in four registers:- Academic, conversation, news, fiction

• Research on four properties:- Linguistic, conceptual, discursive, cognitive

VICI-group

Chicago (LA-group)

Metaphor in conversation

• 50,000 words from BNC Baby: transcripts• Metaphorically used words: prepositions,

phrasal verbs, delexicalized verbs, demonstratives

– Real-time nature of spoken language? – Language system, non-deliberate– Multimodality

Spoken metaphorStewart & Heredia (2002)

His friend replied: ‘Aw, the creampuff*** didn’t even show*** up’

Metaphoric probe: boxerLiteralprobe: pastry

Q: Is there something about spoken metaphor that makes it easier to comprehend than written metaphor?

Q: Does speech influence metaphor comprehension /interpretation?

Spoken metaphorNygaard & Lunders (2002)

‘die/dye’ -> neutral, happy or sad voice

Bowdle & Gentner (2005)

‘Career of Metaphor’Novel versus conventional metaphor

-> If we have A is like B similes, does emotional/biased tone of voice affect the speed with which people understand these figurative expressions and does it affect their interpretations?

Stimuli

• Rating study:– Familiarity (familiar, novel and in between)– Semantic valence (negative, ambiguous, positive)

• Tone of voice: record items with male lay actor in neutral, positive and negative voice

• Nonsense items in positive, negative, and neutral voice

ExperimentFamiliarity Familiar Novel In between

Sem valence pos neg pos neg ambiguous

Congruous/biased voice

pos neg pos neg pos/neg

Neutral voice

neutral neutral neutral

Incongruous voice

neg pos neg pos ********

Experimental items: ‘Children are like sponges’ / ‘Those critics are like raptors’ / ‘The civilservant is like an ant’

Control items: ‘A cat is like spinach’

Tasks: 1) Does this utterance make sense? -> Reaction Times2) Paraphrase what the sentence means -> interpretation responses

Experiment cont’d

Hypotheses: • Interpretation with a congruent / biased intonation is

faster, because this leads to extra context enabling a listener to think in a specific direction, instead of finding the best relationship him/herself

• Familiar expressions will be understood faster (intonation does not necessarily help, because not necessary) than in between/novel expressions (they will take longer than familiar expressions, but are quicker to interpret with congruent/biased than with neutral intonation)

Results Familiarity Familiar* Novel* Inbetween

Sem valence pos neg pos neg ambiguousneg

ambiguous pos

Congruous/biased

557.19 482.65* 721.90 628.75* 744.72 *681.64

Neutral 556.72 622.99 718.32 663.39 745.54

Incongruous 548.68* 639.99 701.32* 675.37 ********

Average reaction times in milliseconds; based on 45 participants; only correct YES answers included

Results (2)

• Familiar expressions are significantly more quickly understood than unfamiliar expressions

• Negative tone of voice expressions are significantly faster (both in congruous and incongruous conditions). Why?

• Ambiguous items are more quickly understood with positive tone of voice than with either neutral or negative tone of voice. Why?

Further considerations

• Rate tone of voice of lay actor• Analyse interpretations (+ rate them for valence)

• Speech versus writing in a comparable fashion• Nature of the “A is like B” comparisons: abstract

versus concrete• Interaction between tone of voice and context• Reference metaphor instead of simile• Deliberateness and contrastive stress