An intra-verbal explication of the nature of metaphor

Abstract

Thirty subjects selected a metaphor or a literal word to complete each of 36 sentences, under instructions to choose the word that more accurately encoded a group of ideas suggested by a set of four cue words. Each sentence was presented under three conditions: (a) with a set consisting of words more often associated with the metaphorical word; (b) with a set of words more often associated with the literal word; and (c) with a set which were common associations of both metaphor and literal words. Under condition (a), the mean number of choices of the metaphor was 8.8 out of 12; under (b) the literal word was chosen an average of 7.6 times out of 12; under (c) the two response words were chosen equally often. The metaphors were also classified into five categories and were rated for goodness as figures of speech. These results were related to the other findings. The implications of these effects for an explication of the nature of metaphor were discussed.