UNDERSTANDING METAPHOR.
Item
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Title
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UNDERSTANDING METAPHOR.
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Identifier
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AAI8319810
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identifier
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8319810
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Creator
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WALDBRAND, WARREN.
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Contributor
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Michael Studdert-Kennedy | Samuel R. Levin
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Date
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1983
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Psychology, Experimental
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Abstract
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After a review of the philosophic, literary, and experimental literature on metaphor, an hypothesis on the processing of metaphorical expressions is formulated: Metaphors are more psycholinguistically complex than literal expressions. With sufficient linguistic context, the difference between the psycholinguistic complexity of the two classes of expressions will diminish, but it will never disappear. A series of experiments were conducted to test the hypothesis.;In Experiment I, a comprehension time measure was used to compare the relative psycholinguistic complexity of literals and metaphors out of context. Metaphors were found to be significantly more complex than literals, although the Minimum F' test only approached significance.;A second experiment, with short, long, and no context conditions, was conducted. While context shortened comprehension time for both metaphors and literals significantly, only the by-subject analysis revealed metaphors to be significantly more complex to process than literals.;It was hypothesized that a factor other than metaphoricity, namely plausibility, was largely controlling comprehension time for the sentences studied. A post hoc experiment was conducted to test this hypothesis, and evidence was found that metaphoricity and plausibility were highly correlated, and, importantly, that plausibility was more strongly correlated with comprehension time than was metaphoricity.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Speech and Hearing Sciences
