when metaphors function as schemas: some cognitive effects of conceptual metaphors

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This article was downloaded by: [Virginia Tech Libraries] On: 21 August 2014, At: 09:38 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Metaphor and Symbolic Activity Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hmet19 When Metaphors Function as Schemas: Some Cognitive Effects of Conceptual Metaphors David W. Allbritton Published online: 17 Nov 2009. To cite this article: David W. Allbritton (1995) When Metaphors Function as Schemas: Some Cognitive Effects of Conceptual Metaphors, Metaphor and Symbolic Activity, 10:1, 33-46, DOI: 10.1207/ s15327868ms1001_4 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15327868ms1001_4 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

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Page 1: When Metaphors Function as Schemas: Some Cognitive Effects of Conceptual Metaphors

This article was downloaded by: [Virginia Tech Libraries]On: 21 August 2014, At: 09:38Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Metaphor and Symbolic ActivityPublication details, including instructions for authors and subscriptioninformation:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hmet19

When Metaphors Function as Schemas:Some Cognitive Effects of ConceptualMetaphorsDavid W. AllbrittonPublished online: 17 Nov 2009.

To cite this article: David W. Allbritton (1995) When Metaphors Function as Schemas: Some CognitiveEffects of Conceptual Metaphors, Metaphor and Symbolic Activity, 10:1, 33-46, DOI: 10.1207/s15327868ms1001_4

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15327868ms1001_4

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the“Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, ouragents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to theaccuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions andviews expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are notthe views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not berelied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylorand Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs,expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly orindirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantialor systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply,or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of accessand use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Page 2: When Metaphors Function as Schemas: Some Cognitive Effects of Conceptual Metaphors

METAPHOR AND SYMBOLIC ACTIVITY 10(1), 33-46 Copyright O 1995, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

When Metaphors Function as Schemas: Some Cognitive Effects of

Conceptual Metaphors

David W . Allbritton Department of Psychology

Northwestern University

The nature of metaphor, the processes of metaphor comprehension, and the functions of metaphor are identified as three distinct issues for metaphor re- search. It is suggested that the strengths and weaknesses of current theories of metaphor are dependent on the type of metaphor being examined, with each theory providing a plausible account for some kinds of metaphors but not for others. Recent research on the possible functions of metaphor is discussed. In particular, evidence that metaphors function as schemas is reviewed, including experimental evidence that metaphor-based schemas can affect the structure of readers' text representations.

Although several different approaches to the topic of metaphor are evident in the literature, none has yet succeeded in establishing itself as the dominant theory of metaphor in psychology. My aim in this article is neither to argue for one of the existing theories nor to offer a new theory of metaphor. Instead, I have adopted a more modest goal of stating clearly some of the questions that a theory of metaphor should address. I suggest that differences between current theories of metaphor often are really differences in what kinds of questions are being asked or in what kinds of phenomena are being examined. After outlining what I see as some of the central issues concerning metaphor, I then devote the rest of the article to a discussion of one of those issues-the function of metaphor and the effect of metaphor on language and cognitive processes. In particular, I suggest that an important function of metaphor is the creation of schemas for understanding abstract domains of experience.

Requests for reprints should be sent to David W. Allbritton, Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208.

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34 ALLBRITTQN

In talking about metaphor, there are a number of distinctions that are useful to keep in mind. First, a distinction can be drawn between metaphor as a linguistic phenomenon and metaphor as a means of understanding or between metaphorical language and metaphorical thought processes. The term metaphor is most often used to mean metaphorical, as opposed to literal, language. Thinking about metaphor in this way, it has often been observed that metaphors differ from "normal" literal language in a number of respects, and attempting to specify how and why metaphor is different has been a fruitful topic of research. For example, statements that would be false or anomalous as literal utterances can, nevertheless, be true and informative as metaphors. Yet, in spite of their supposed anomaly, metaphors are often comprehended as easily as literal language (Gerrig & Healy, 1983; Harris, 1976; Inhoff, Lima, & Carroll, 1984; Ortony, Schallert, Reynolds, & Antos, 1978).

Although some would argue that the only thing that the word metaphor can legitimately refer to is metaphorical language (e.g., Jackendoff & Aaron, 1991), the idea that metaphor is as much a matter of thought as of language has been around for quite some time (e.g., Black, 1954/1981; Richards, 19361 1981). More recently, Lakoff and Johnson (1980) spelled out this idea in more detail with their distinction between linguistic and "conceptual" metaphors, which they described as mappings of knowledge about one con- ceptual domain onto a different domain. The idea that conceptual metaphors systematically structure the way that many domains are understood has subsequently been used to help explain, among other things, the nature of emotion concepts (Kovecses, 1990; Lakoff & Kovecses, 1987) and the mean- ings of idioms (Gibbs & O'Brien, 1990; Nayak & Gibbs, 1990). I use the idea of conceptual metaphor in my account of how metaphor can function to increase the coherence of text representations, and the distinction between linguistic and conceptual metaphors is one to which I return later.

Another kind of distinction can usefuIly be drawn among several possible questions about metaphor that a researcher may try to address. A question that often has been raised about linguistic metaphors is how they are com- prehended. One line of research has focused on whether the processes in- volved in metaphor comprehension are any different from those used to comprehend literal language (Gerrig, 1989; Gerrig & Healy, 1983; Gibbs, 1984; Gildea & Glucksberg, 1983; Glucksberg, Gildea, & Bookin, 1982; Inhoff et al., 1984; Janus & Bever, 1985; Ortony et al., 1978; Searle, 1979). Other research has attempted to spell out possibIe mechanisms for metaphor interpretation, such as the matching of features shared by the topic (or subject) and vehicle (or predicate) terms of the metaphor (Ortony, 1979; Tversky, 1977).

Closely related to the question of how metaphors are understood is the question of what a metaphor is. Various accounts have portrayed metaphors

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as assertions of similarity between topic and vehicle domains (Ortony, 1979; Tversky, 1977), interactions of topic and vehicle domains (Black, 19541 1981; Sternberg & Nigro, 1983; Tourangeau & Sternberg, 1981, 1982), attributions of features from the vehicle domain to the topic domain (D. Gentner, 1983; Lakoff & Johnson, 1980) and, recently, as class-inclusion statements (Glucks- berg, 199 1; Glucksberg & Keysar, 1990). Although each of these theories has had some success in accounting for the aptness and comprehension of some metaphors, it is possible that there is more than one type of metaphor and that theories that do a good job 01 describing one kind of metaphor may not work as well for others. The class-inclusion theory, for example, limits its scope to accounting for metaphors in nominative form, such as "my job is a jail. " Global metaphors such as "LIFE IS A JOURNEY may fit well into theories that treat metaphors as structural analogies (D. Gentner, 1983; Lakoff & Johnson, 1980), but metaphors that seem to refer to a single attribute shared by the topic and vehicle domains, such as "the wind was whispering through the trees, " might be better suited to a similarity-based account. The answer to the question "What is a metaphor?" may turn out to be different depending on which metaphors are being examined. The kinds of metaphors that I am primarily concerned with in this discussion are global, analogical metaphors such as those discussed by Lakoff and Johnson.

FUNCTIONS OF METAPHOR

Rather than exploring what metaphor is, or how metaphors are com- prehended, I examine the question of what metaphors do. The fact that speakers so frequently opt to use metaphor rather than a more "straightfor- ward" literal utterance suggests that there must be some useful function that metaphor performs. I discuss what some of those functions might be based on research by other investigators and on my research on the role of meta- phor in text comprehension and representation.

One use that has been proposed for metaphor is the interpersonal func- tion of fostering intimacy between speakers and listeners (Cohen, 1979; Gibbs & Gerrig, 1989). Theorizing that metaphors rely more heavily on the existence of mutual knowledge or conversational common ground be- tween speakers and listeners than does literal language, Gibbs and Gerrig proposed that the special function served by metaphor may be to highlight the common ground between participants in a conversation. On this ac- count, the common perception of metaphor as being special, or different from literal language in a signscant way, might result from metaphor's function of promoting intimacy and not from any special processing re- quired for metaphor comprehension. In Gibbs and Gerrig's terminology, the distinguishing feature of metaphor comprehension might be its prod-

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ucts rather than its process. This distinction between the processes and products of metaphor comprehension corresponds to the distinction be- tween the question of how metaphors are understood and the question of what they do, with the fostering of intimacy offering one possible answer to the latter question.

Other, more cognitive functions have also been proposed for metaphor. Camac and Glucksberg (1984) suggested that metaphors may be responsi- ble for creating similarities between their topic and vehicle domains. In contrast to some comprehension theories in which metaphors are hypothe- sized to rely on preexisting semantic associations between topic and vehi- cle, Camac and Glucksberg proposed that the associations are instead created as a product of the comprehension process. Kelly and Keil (1987) tested this hypothesis by comparing the semantic similarity of pairs of items before and after they had been presented as the topic and vehicle of a metaphor. Ratings on a number of semantic dimensions were more simi- lar for pairs of words after the presentation of a metaphor. For example, "Richard Nixon" was found to be rated as more similar to "submarines," following presentation of the metaphor "Richard Nixon is the submarine of politicians. " Furthermore, presentation of such a metaphor caused other items from the same two domains to be rated more similarly, even if they had not been explicitly paired in a metaphor in the experiment, such as "Arafat" and "pirate ship" in this example. This suggests that the connec- tion of a topic and vehicle domain through metaphor can affect the way that those domains are understood, causing the perceived similarity of members of the two domains to increase.

A related cognitive function that metaphor often fulfills is that of pro- viding a framework for understanding a new domain or for restructuring the understanding of a familiar domain. This function is particularly evi- dent in the realm of scientific theories. Roediger's (1980) analysis of meta- phors that have formed the basis for theories of human memory provides some examples. Metaphors for memory have been derived from such things as wax tablets, phonographs, switchboards, and computers. Each of these metaphors has at one time or another influenced theoretical accounts of human memory. Roediger noted the constraints that the computer met- aphor has placed on current theories and argued for the introduction of new metaphors to overcome these constraints, thus, implicitly recognizing the power of metaphor to restructure the understanding of a conceptual domain.

D. Gentner and D. R. Gentner (1983) provided an example of differences in understanding that can result from the use of different metaphors for the same topic. Their research showed that two different analogies for electricity can lead to differences in the way people understand and reason about electrodynamics. An electric current can be metaphorically compared to a

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flowing liquid, such as a river, or to a moving crowd of objects, such as cars on a highway. In a task requiring participants to reason about the conse- quences of how batteries and resistors were arranged in an electronic circuit, participants' performance was found to be dependent on which metaphor for electricity they used.

As these examples show, using a metaphor to describe a domain can affect the way that domain is understood. One way to think of this is that the metaphor results in knowledge about the vehicle domain being used as a scaffold on which to build an understanding of the topic domain. In the case of highly elaborated analogical metaphors such as the two metaphors for electricity, knowledge about a relatively well-known domain can be used to fill in gaps in one's understanding of a second domain. As has been pointed out by Lakoff and Johnson (1980), these kinds of elaborated metaphorical mappings can occur not only in the case of formal scientific theories, but also in the case of many ordinary concepts from people's everyday lives. Just as the metaphor "ELECTRICITY IS FLO WING WATER" can help determine how electrical phenomena are understood, the way that other concepts such as success, communication, anger, and even the concept of the self are under- stood may be partially structured by conceptual metaphors. Anger, for in- stance, is often characterized in terms of heat and pressure, reflecting the influence of the conceptual metaphor "ANGER IS A HOT FLUID IN A CLOSED CONTAINER" (Kovecses, 1986, 1990). This way of thinking about anger is reflected in such common expressions as "steaming mad" and 'yip your lid. "

In using the term conceptual metaphor, Lakoff and Johnson (1980) sought to emphasize the distinction between metaphor as a kind of utterance and metaphor in the realm of thought. On their account, it is not the use of a linguistic metaphor such as "time is money" that is ultimately responsible for structuring one's understanding of time in terms of currency, but rather it is the metaphorical way of thinking about time which leads to the use of the verbal metaphor. Metaphor, on this account, is primarily a matter of thought. Both the verbal instantiations of the metaphor and the partial restructuring of the way the metaphor's topic domain is understood are products of the underlying conceptual metaphor.

Whether or not we accept the idea that these global metaphors always originate at the conceptual level, rather than originating as verbal metaphors that then lead to conceptual changes, it seems clear that they are conceptual rather than purely linguistic entities. One of the primary reasons for suggest- ing this is that the influence of conceptual metaphors is often apparent even in nonmetaphorical utterances. The influence of the conceptual metaphor "ARGUMENT IS WAR," for example, is evident not only in figurative expressions such as "a war of words, " but also in literal expressions such as defending your position and an unassailable argument.

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SCHEMAS BASED ON CONCEPTUAL METAPHORS

This brings us to the main topic of this discussion: What are the effects on language and cognitive processes that result from the existence of conceptual metaphors? In other words, what do conceptual metaphors do? I argue that conceptual metaphors are responsible for the existence of schematic knowl- edge structures that can influence the way information about a metaphor's topic domain is processed and represented in memory. To highlight the uniquely metaphorical origins of such structures, I refer to them as metaphor- based schemas.

The entailments of a conceptual metaphor, such as "CRIME IS A DIS- EASE," form a systematic framework, or schema, for understanding the topic domain of the metaphor ("crime" in this example). Some of the entail- ments that might be included in such a schema for "CRIME AS DISEASE" include "the source of crime can be diagnosed" (it has an identifiable cause) and "crime has a cure" (there is something that can eliminate crime). When one piece of information that fits the schema is encountered, additional information from the schema can then be filled in. In this way, such a schema is not unlike other schemas or scripts that have been identified for such things as going to a restaurant (Schank & Abelson, 1977). What makes the "CRIME AS DISEASE" schema special, however, is that it is not simply a summary of things that one knows about crime, but rather it is an encapsula- tion of a particular way of understanding crime which results from the metaphorical comparison of crime to a disease.

One of the ways that schemas have been hypothesized to affect the pro- cessing of information is by acting as a filter, highlighting incoming informa- tion which is consistent with the schema, and hiding information that does not fit into the schema (Bartlett, 1932). Such schema-induced filtering is exactly what Reddy (1979) claimed occurs for the domain of communication as a result of the influence of the conduit metaphor. The conduit metaphor portrays ideas as physical objects and communication as the transfer of those objects from one person to another. According to Reddy, the conduit meta- phor characterizes the predominant mode of thinking about communication and is reflected in a number of common expressions that rely on the conduit metaphor, such as "getting an idea across," "empty words," and '>put your ideas into words. "Thinking about communication in this way can be mislead- ing, Reddy claimed, because it hides important aspects of the communicative process. In the terms I have been using, the conduit metaphor creates a schema for communication that can act as a filter for information about that domain.

Another function attributed to schemas is that of ordering information in a systematic way based on the schema's internal structure. For example, Bower, Black, and Turner (1979) found that a schema such as a restaurant

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script could structure the order of recall of information from a text, indicat- ing that the information was organized to fit within the order of events specified by the schema. Research by Gibbs and his associates points to a similar function for metaphor-based schemas in the comprehension and use of idioms (Gibbs & O'Brien, 1990; Nayak & Gibbs, 1990). The traditional view of idiom meanings is that they are unitized phrases that function as single lexical entries with conventionally stipulated meanings. Although idi- oms may have originated as metaphors at one time, they have, on this account, become disconnected from their metaphorical origins over time and have ceased to depend on those metaphorical roots for comprehension. Contrary to this view, several studies have shown that idiom meanings are not always lexicalized units but, rather, can be decomposable into parts (Gibbs & Gonzales, 1985; Gibbs & Nayak, 1989; Gibbs, Nayak, Bolton, & Keppel, 1989; Gibbs, Nayak, & Cutting, 1989). Furthermore, Gibbs showed that the meanings of some idioms are motivated by underlying conceptual metaphors and that speakers of English retain some knowledge of these metaphorical underpinnings (Gibbs & O'Brien, 1990; Nayak & Gibbs, 1990). Nayak and Gibbs, for example, found that the contextual appropriateness of an idiom depends on whether the idiom refers to the correct temporal stage of a metaphorically structured "conceptual prototype." "Hip your lid" and "do a slow burn, "for example, are both idioms whose figurative meaning can be paraphrased as to get angry, but they refer to different temporal stages of the conceptual prototype for anger. The underlying conceptual metaphor is "ANGER IS HEAT IN A PRESSURIZED CONTAINER." "Do a slow burn " refers to a stage in which pressure gradually accumulates, whereas 'j7lip your lid" refers to a temporally subsequent stage in which pressure is violently released. Nayak and Gibbs found that readers were sensitive to such differ- ences in meaning and were able to identify the metaphorical underpinnings of the meanings of many idioms. Nayak and Gibbs's research can, then, be interpreted as showing that metaphor-based schemas can provide a structure for organizing information about a topic, as evidenced by participants' pref- erences for idioms which fit appropriately into the temporal ordering re- quired by a metaphor-based schema.

In addition to the roles schemas may play in filtering and organizing incoming information, schemas also provide a means for connecting pieces of information in memory. Previous research has shown some types of sche- mas to be capable of creating connections within memory representations between items that share a relationship to a schema (McKoon, Ratcliff, & Seifert, 1989; Seifert, Abelson, McKoon, & Ratcliff, 1986). My own research has shown that metaphor-based schemas are also capable of creating such connections in memory (Allbritton, McKoon, & Gerrig, in press).

In a series of experiments testing participants' memory for texts, Allbrit- ton et al. (in press) found evidence that metaphor-based schemas created

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connections between elements of readers' text representations. Participants in the experiments read brief passages in which metaphor-based schemas were instantiated, such as the following passage that uses the schema for crime based on the conceptual metaphor "CRIME IS A DISEASE":

The most recent crime statistics confirmed what New Yorkers had suspected. All major categories had increased significantly from last year. "The city's crime epidemic was raging out of control." Extra police patrols had been ordered, but they had little effect. If anything, they seemed to aggravate the problem. Patrols in problem areas only inflicted more violence on neighboring areas. "Soon, the violence began to infect even safe neighborhoods." "Public officials desperately looked for a cure."

This passage describes crime in a way that is consistent with the "CRIME AS DISEASE" schema. In particular, the sentences "The city's crime epi- demic was raging out of control" and "Public oficials desperately looked for a cure" express entailments of the metaphor that would presumably be part of the schema. Because both of these sentences instantiate the same meta- phor-based schema, Allbritton et al. (in press) hypothesized that readers would form a connection between the two sentences in their mental represen- tations of the text. In the experimental materials that were used, there were always at least two such schema-related sentences in each passage, one early in the passage and one at the end of the passage.

In order to test the hypothesis that sentences instantiating the same schema would be connected in a text representation, a control condition was needed in which one of the sentences was not related to the metaphor-based schema. This was accomplished by changing the context preceding the final sentence of the passage so that the last sentence would no longer be inter- preted as an instantiation of the metaphor. This version of the "CRIME AS DISEASE" passage looked like this:

The most recent crime statistics confirmed what New Yorkers had suspected. All major categories had increased significantly from last year. "The city's crime epidemic was raging out of control." Though badly needed, police patrols in the city could not be increased. A new and virulent strain of pneumonia was plaguing the force. Almost a third of the department was infected already. The disease had struck at the worst possible time. Public officials desperately looked for a cure.

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In this version, the final sentence is no longer linked to the metaphor-based schema because it now refers to a cure for a literal disease rather than to a metaphorical cure for crime. Therefore, this sentence should not be as closely associated to the earlier schema-instantiating sentence in a reader's mental representation of this version of the passage, compared to the other version.

After reading the passages, participants were given a recognition test for either words or sentences that they had read. Both word and sentence recog- nition have been used successfully to demonstrate other kinds of connections within readers' text representations, such as connections based on argument repetition (McKoon & Ratcliff, 1980b) or anaphoric reference (Dell, McKoon, & Ratcliff, 1983; McKoon & Ratcliff, 1980a). Test items are recog- nized more quickly when they are preceded in the test by a "prime" to which they are linked in readers' text representations.

Allbritton et al. (in press) found faster recognition times for both words and sentences that were preceded by a prime related to the same metaphor- based schema as the test item. For example, the test sentence "Public oficials desperately looked for a cure" was preceded in the recognition test by the schema-instantiating sentence "The city's crime epidemic was raging out of control. " Participants were faster to recognize the test sentence when they had read the version of the passage in which both the prime and target sentences instantiated the schema than when they had read the version in which one of the sentences did not. Similar priming was observed when words rather than sentences were presented for recognition, even when topic changes within the passages were eliminated.

These results support the conclusion that metaphor-based schemas can be used to link elements of readers' text representations. The priming results found by Allbritton et al. (in press) indicate that metaphor-based schemas can be used as a basis for relating and connecting pieces of information in a text representation, in a way that simple semantic associations do not ac- count for. Thus, metaphor has been shown to be a possible source of in- creased coherence in text representations, by providing a means for tying together some of the ideas in a text. In this way, metaphor may play an important role in the comprehension not only of figurative language, but of discourse in general.

In the account I have given of the role of metaphor-based schemas in text representation, I have characterized these schemas as part of the world knowledge that readers bring to the process of text comprehension. This approach to metaphor-based schemas is compatible with the view of concep- tual metaphors proposed by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) in linguistics and supported by psychological research on idiom comprehension (Gibbs, 1992; Gibbs & O'Brien, 1990; Nayak & Gibbs, 1990). There is, however, at least one alternative view of conceptual metaphors. Glucksberg, Keysar, and McGlone (1992) argued that conceptual metaphors may not reflect preexist-

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ing mappings between domains that are part of long-term memory. Rather, they suggested that these mappings may be created only during the process of metaphor comprehension, through the formation of an ad hoc category to which the topic of the metaphor can be assigned. On this alternative view, the metaphor-based schemas need not be assumed to have been part of partici- pants' preexisting knowledge but, rather, could have been constructed ad hoc during comprehension. On this account, the conceptual metaphor "CRIME IS A DISEASE" is not necessarily organized knowledge that partially struc- tures understanding of what crime is but, rather, could simply be a way of looking at crime which readers can quickly assimilate when reading a text that uses that metaphor.

Although either view of conceptual metaphors is consistent with the prim- ing results reported in Allbritton et al. (in press) and with the general idea that metaphor can help to structure text representations, there are a number of reasons to think that metaphor-based schemas are not simply transitory, ad hoc structures. First, figurative expressions that appear to be motivated by conceptual metaphors, such as those used by Allbritton et al., are widespread in both everyday prose and in poetic metaphor (Kovecses, 1988; Lakoff, 1987; Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, 1981a; Lakoff & Kovecses, 1987; Lakoff & Turner, 1989; Reddy, 1979; Turner, 1987). The systematicity with which such expressions fit into the overall framework of their corresponding conceptual metaphors strongly suggests that there are general schemas that are used to structure the conceptual metaphors' topic domains. Given that such system- atic mappings from one domain to another are used over and over again, it seems unlikely that they would be generated anew each time a metaphor is encountered. Instead, we would expect them to eventually become part of long-term semantic memory because of the frequency with which they are encountered.

Second, there are many nonfigurative expressions that reflect the influ- ence of conceptual metaphors. If metaphor-based schemas are not availa- ble in long-term memory but are merely created when a metaphor is encountered, it is difficult to see how they could systematically influence the meanings of nonmetaphorical expressions. There is considerable lin- guistic evidence that literal utterances, and even word meanings, reflect the influence of conceptual metaphors (Kovecses, 1986, 1990; Lakoff, 1987; Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, 1981b; Lakoff & Kovecses, 1987; Sweetser, 1990). In particular, Sweetser (1990) provided evidence that word mean- ings and changes in meaning over time reflect the influences of conceptual metaphors. Across several languages, words referring to the body, or ex- ternal self, often come to refer to the mind, or internal self (see also John- son, 1987). Perceptual words such as see, for example, often come to refer to mental activities such as knowing. The coherence of these instances of

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polysemy within the framework of a "MIND AS BODY metaphor, to- gether with their consistency across languages, strongly suggests a meta- phorical motivation for these word meanings.

Finally, experimental studies of idiom comprehension suggest that con- ceptual metaphors systematically structure the use and interpretation of many idioms, although the evidence on just when such metaphor-based knowledge is actually accessible is somewhat mixed. There is evidence that readers are sensitive to differences in the way that idioms fit into the con- ceptual prototypes created by conceptual metaphors and that readers are aware of the metaphorical origins of many idiom meanings (Gibbs & O'Brien, 1990; Nayak & Gibbs, 1990). This suggests that conceptual meta- phors are available in memory. Glucksberg, Brown, and McGlone (1993), however, failed to find evidence that such structures were automatically accessed during the comprehension of idioms. They interpreted their find- ings as an indication that conceptual metaphors probably are not accessi- ble during comprehension and further argued that there is no conclusive evidence that such metaphors are even available in memory. On the other hand, Nayak and Gibbs (1990, Experiment 4) did find that participants were faster to judge idioms as grammatically acceptable when the idiom followed a context with which it was analogically consistent than when the context was inconsistent with its underlying conceptual metaphor. This suggests that the information related to the conceptual metaphors was ac- cessible when the idioms were read, even though nothing in the task re- quired participants to attend to the analogical consistency between the idiom and its context. Although I would argue that there are a number of reasons to think that metaphor-based schemas are available in memory, the issue of exactly when such metaphors are accessible to comprehension processes remains to be clarified by future research.

In conclusion, recent research on metaphor has provided ample reason to believe that metaphor is indeed, as Richards (193611981) said, more than merely "a sort of happy extra trick with words" (p. 49). Metaphor has been shown to serve a number of important cognitive functions, including that of making new conceptual domains accessible through metaphorical "scaf- folds" imported from better known domains, such as in the case of meta- phors in science, and providing a coherent framework or schema for understanding such everyday topics as time, arguments, and emotions. In addition, schemas derived from conceptual metaphors are capable of form- ing connections between elements within a text representation, suggesting that metaphor may play an important role in text comprehension. The most interesting things that we learn about metaphor may turn out to be not the mechanisms through which metaphors are understood but, rather, the things that metaphor allows us to do.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Preparation of this article was supported in part by NIDCD Grant No. R01-DC01240 and AFOSR Grant No. 90-0246 (jointly funded by NSF) held by Gail McKoon.

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