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Cognitive Linguistics and the Study of Chinese
Edited by Dingfang Shu, Hui Zhang and Lifei Zhang
[Human Cognitive Processing 67] 2019
► pp. 261–284

Chapter 9
The role of metaphor in categorization

A time course study

| Jiangsu Ocean University
| South China Normal University

This study is concerned with the processing of metaphor in real time for the purpose of elucidating metaphor categorization. We distinguish between attributive metaphors such as the surface of the lake is a mirror, in which the attributes of a lake are likened to those of a mirror, and conceptually complex relational metaphors like history is a mirror, which exhibit a structural resemblance between the topic history and the metaphorical vehicle mirror. We conducted an experiment that provided evidence that for attributive metaphors only literal meanings of the vehicle are activated, while in relational metaphors they are activated only for 300 ms, but then actively suppressed. Our experimental data suggest that, for relational metaphors, structure-mapping and schema induction underlie metaphorical categorization.

Keywords: attributive similarity, relational similarity, schema induction, structure mappping
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical assumptions
    • 2.1Attributive similarity vs. relational similarity
    • 2.2Schema induction as categorization
  • 3.Working hypotheses
  • 4.The experiment
    • 4.1Research aim
    • 4.2Method
      • 4.2.1Participants
      • 4.2.2Design
      • 4.2.3Material development
        • A.Manipulation of priming metaphor similarity
        • B.Manipulation of target words
    • 4.3Procedure
  • 5.Results
  • 6.Discussion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 20 November 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.67.11gon
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