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Pragmatics: Online-First Articles

Creative metaphors and non-propositional effects

An experiment

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Over the last decade there has been growing relevance-theoretic interest in the interpretation of creative metaphors. Much of this interest has focused on non-propositional aspects of interpretation: mental image effects/emotive effects. Central to this enquiry is the following question: are non-propositional effects essential to the metaphorical interpretation process? The implications of answering this question are important, since, if the answer is positive, then the delivery of metaphorical interpretation depends, not only on utterance processing, but also on the hearer’s formation of mental images as well as emotive experience. Relevance-theoretic studies argue that mental images do not fulfill an essential role in the metaphorical interpretation process. While the supporting evidence is solid, it requires experimental substantiation. The current paper responds to this requirement, taking on board emotive effects, too, apart from mental images. Ultimately, the current work concludes that the role of non-propositional effects in metaphorical interpretation is not essential.

Keywords: non-propositional effects, mental images, affective effects, relevance theory, creative metaphors
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Creative metaphors, mental images and affective effects
    • 2.1Mental images
    • 2.2Affective effects
  • 3.Non-propositional effects: An application
  • 4.Experiment
    • 4.1Aim
    • 4.2Participants
    • 4.3Materials – procedure
    • 4.4Methods – rationale
      • 4.4.1Choice of linguistic medium
      • 4.4.2Questions
      • 4.4.3The relativity (or indeterminacy) of non-propositional effects
    • 4.5Results and preliminary discussion
    • 4.6Interpretation of results
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 17 August 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.22034.bar
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