Publications
Publication details [#17726]
Gentner, Dedre and Brian F. Bowdle. 2001. Convention, Form, and Figurative Language Processing. Metaphor and Symbol 16 (3/4) : 223–247. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
Publication type
Article in journal
Publication language
English
Place, Publisher
Lawrence Erlbaum
Annotation
There are 2 basic controversies concerning how metaphors are processed. First, are metaphoric mappings more akin to literal comparisons or to literal categorizations? And second, is metaphor comprehension indirect or direct? We believe that these controversies are more apparent than real and that a unified theoretical framework can be offered that reconciles these opposing views. The central idea is that all metaphors involve structural alignment of the target and base domains. Whether these alignments are more akin to comparisons or to categorizations, and whether they are computed directly or indirectly, depends on 2 factors: the type of representation invoked by the base term and the linguistic form of the metaphor.