Metaphor Comprehension and Knowledge of Semantic Domains
- 1 March 1987
- journal article
- Published by Taylor & Francis in Metaphor and Symbolic Activity
- Vol. 2 (1) , 33-51
- https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327868ms0201_3
Abstract
In this experiment, metaphor comprehension is found to affect similarity relations between concepts never presented in metaphor, but which belong to the same semantic domains as concepts previously related. In particular, concepts that would form appropriate metaphors increase in similarity as a consequence of reading other metaphors relating their domains, whereas concepts that would form inappropriate metaphors decrease in similarity. In addition, because the vehicle of a metaphor is the background against which the tenor is viewed, we predicted and obtained greater conceptual shifts in the tenors of metaphors than the vehicles. This asymmetry in movement also appeared in concepts from the same domain as the tenor, but which were never seen in metaphor, thus indicating that it is not simply the concept of. the tenor that is restructured by a metaphor, but the tenor's domain.Keywords
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