Reading metaphors
Metaphor comprehension process from an ecological prospective
Nicola Spotorno, L2C2, Lyon
Introduction
Think about one popular and conventional metaphor like: “This lawyer is a shark”. What are the cognitive processes
behind the comprehension of utterances like this? Most of the times psycholinguistic and neuroscientific researches
on metaphor have chosen the following line of thought: we have a stimulus, a complex processor that
elaborates it, and one output. The complexity of the processor is big enough for absorbing all the energies and the
attentions of the researchers, but what is missing in this description? The nature of the stimulus. In the real life a
sentences like: “This lawyer is a shark” never comes “out of the blue”. It is dived in a stream of information that
interacts with and modifies the utterance meaning. Our cognitive system cannot work as a processor that takes in
account one piece of information per time and produces the related output, because the complexity is not only in our
mind but already in the stimuli. This prospective changes the approach on the research around “the simple utterance
comprehension” (Van Berkum, 2009). The same questions that have received some answers through the
investigation of sentence in isolation can be analyzed more deeply from an ecological prospective, simply
because the nature of the input is looked from a different point of view. The first main point of the present study
is the ecological approach to the research on metaphor. The second point is the investigation of the
comprehension process of metaphor in comparison with the comprehension process of literal and anomalous
sentences. The eyes movements recording technique was chosen because it allows having a high temporal
resolution on the reading process of a sentence.
Design
The present study was designed as a 2x3 within subject study with two independent variables: “metaphoricity”,
which has three levels (metaphor, literal, anomalous), and “context”, with two levels (with and without
discourse context).
Materials
Metaphorical sentences with the structure “Some X are Y” were constructed. For each metaphor an
equivalent literal sentence and an anomalous expression were constructed. Within each triplet the three
sentences share the last target word. In order to create the condition without discourse context the sentences
were simply completed with two fillers expressions: one before the first word and one after the last one. The aim of
these expressions was to avoid confusing effects on the target sentence due to the critical position in the phrasal
structure (table 1 for an example).
Condition
Sentence
“Si nota che certi pesci sono squali ed è chiaro a tutti”
Literal
“We note that some fishes are sharks and it’s clear for everybody”
“Si nota che certi avvocati sono squali ed è chiaro a tutti”
Metaphor
“We note that some lawyers are sharks and it’s clear for everybody”
“Si nota che certi fischietti sono squali ed è chiaro a tutti”
Anomalous
“We note that some whistles are sharks and it’s clear for everybody”
Table 1: Example of stimuli in the “without context” condition.
In order to prepare the contextualized stimuli, a short paragraph was constructed for each condition. The
aim of the paragraph is to give a realistic context to the target sentence. Therefore in the metaphorical
condition the paragraph would facilitate the metaphorical interpretation of the target sentence. In the literal
condition the context would facilitate the literal interpretation. In the anomalous condition the paragraph tells a
story coherent with the term X of the target sentence (where the structure of the target sentence is “Some X are Y”)
(table 2 for an example).
Condition
Paragraph
“Ieri ho parlato con un magistrato. È impegnato in un processo molto difficile. Ho visto
che gli avvocati più scaltri basano le strategie difensive sull’umiliazione degli avversari.
Certi avvocati sono squali e ritengo che questa tattica non faccia onore alla loro
professione.”
Metaphor
“Yesterday, I spoke with a judge. He told me about a very difficult case. I saw that the
cunning and merciless lawyers could found their defense strategy on the humiliation of
their adversaries. Some lawyers are sharks and I think that this tactic does not do honor
to their profession.”
Table 2: Example of stimulus in “with context” condition.
Results and discussion
Results for three regions of interest are reported. Region 1comprised the subject of the sentence that, in the case of
metaphor, is called topic. Region 2 contained the predicate. In all the sentences the predicate is formed by the copula
plus a noun; in the metaphorical condition the noun is called vehicle. Region 2 is the most critical region for the
analysis. Region 3 is the last filler expression, called spill over region. The effect of context is visible in all the
regions of interest and with different kind of measures. The measure of the first reading of the region
(called First pass time) was significantly longer (p < 0,05) in the conditions without discourse context than
in the conditions with context. The effect is present in regions 1, 2 and 3. The difference was significant for
metaphorical, anomalous and literal sentences. The reading of metaphors and literal sentences are not significantly
different in the condition with context, while the time spent in reading anomalous sentences is longer than the time
spent for the other conditions in all the regions. The data show that when metaphor is placed in between literal and
anomalous sentences the comprehension process is closer to literal that to anomalous extreme. The main result that
emerges from the present study is the effect of context on the comprehension of a single sentence, in general,
independently on figurative or anomalous features. The presence of a discourse that creates a general scenario for a
target sentence affects the comprehension from the earliest steps of the process. The mean duration of a First pass
time is around 400 ms. The present study shows how the cognitive processes that take place around this latency are
strongly influenced by the presence of a realistic context (see Bambini & Bertini, 2010 and Niewland & Van
Berkum, 2006 for compatible results). Psycholinguistic and electrophysiological literature explains how 400 ms is a
critical latency for semantic processes (see Kutas & Van Petten, 1994, for a review). The interpretation of the present
data supports the idea that context plays a crucial role already at the level of the resolution of the semantic analysis of
a target word / sentence.
References
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