Ch. 9 | Exercise 4

Chapter 9 | Exercise 4

Which register has the greatest proportion of metaphoric uses of on? The smallest? The frequencies in the VU Amsterdam Metaphor Corpus are shown in Table 9.1.

Table 9.1. Metaphoric and non-metaphoric uses of on in different registers

	Academic	Conversations	Fiction	News
Metaphoric	255	163	112	205
Non-metaphoric	37	96	121	77

Test if there is a significant association between the register and (non)-metaphoricity. Visualize the data in a mosaic and association plot.

Key

First, create a table in R with all frequencies:

> met <- c(255, 163, 112, 205)
> nonmet <- c(37, 96, 121, 77)
> on <- rbind(met, nonmet)
> colnames(on) <- c('acad', 'conv', 'fic', 'news')
> on
       acad conv fic news
met     255  163 112  205
nonmet   37   96 121   77

To compare the proportions of metaphoric and non-metaphoric uses in four registers, you can use the following code:

> prop.table(on, 2)
            acad      conv       fic      news
met    0.8732877 0.6293436 0.4806867 0.7269504
nonmet 0.1267123 0.3706564 0.5193133 0.2730496

The academic register has the greatest proportion of metaphoric uses (0.87). Fiction has the lowest proportion (0.48).

Now we should test if the variables are associated:

> chisq.test(on)

        Pearson's Chi-squared test

data:  on
X-squared = 99.7487, df = 3, p-value < 2.2e-16

The p-value is almost zero, so the null hypothesis of no association can be safely discarded. To check the contribution of each cell to the result, check the residuals:

> chisq.test(on)$residuals
           acad      conv       fic       news
met     3.78232 -1.165787 -3.838463  0.7575156
nonmet -5.63622  1.737196  5.719882 -1.1288110

The positive and negative values of the residuals indicate the same differences that we have observed. To visualize the residuals, use the mosaic() and assoc() functions in the vcd package:

> library(vcd)
> mosaic(on, shade = T)
> assoc(on, shade = T)