The Relationship Between the Content and the Form of Metaphorical Statements |
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Authors: | Xu Xu |
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Institution: | (1) VA Puget Sound Health Care System in Seattle, WA, USA; |
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Abstract: | Recent research suggests that the quality of a metaphorical topic-vehicle pairing should be the determinant to the choice
of a proper grammatical form, nominal metaphor versus simile. Two studies examined the relationship between the quality of
the content of a metaphorical statement and its grammatical form. Study 1 showed that the two grammatical forms did not differ
in aptness when the quality of topic-vehicle pairs and the conventionality of vehicles, a factor associated with the quality
of metaphorical expressions, were controlled. With an online comprehension measure, Study 2 found that high quality metaphorical
pairings were easier to process than low quality metaphorical pairings in both the metaphor form and the simile form. For
high quality metaphorical pairings, information related to both the topics and the vehicles was highly activated at an early
stage of processing. The relations among factors involved in the interpretive process of metaphorical language are discussed. |
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Keywords: | |
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