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Novel metaphor and embodiment: comprehending novel synesthetic metaphors

  • Yin Zhong ORCID logo , Kathleen Ahrens ORCID logo und Chu-Ren Huang ORCID logo EMAIL logo
Veröffentlicht/Copyright: 25. Juli 2023
Linguistics Vanguard
Aus der Zeitschrift Linguistics Vanguard Band 9 Heft 1

Abstract

Linguistic synesthesia links two concepts from two distinct sensory domains and creates conceptual conflicts at the level of embodied cognition. Previous studies focused on constraints on the directionality of synesthetic mapping as a way to establish the conceptual hierarchy among the five senses (i.e., vision, hearing, taste, smell, and touch). This study goes beyond examining the directionality of conventionalized synesthetic terms by adopting a Conceptual Metaphor Theory approach (i.e., the Conceptual Mapping Model) to test if conventional synesthetic directionality still holds when it comes to novel metaphorical expressions. The subjects, 308 native English speakers, are asked to judge the degree of commonness, appropriateness, understandability, and figurativeness in order to measure the degree of comprehensibility of novel synesthetic metaphors. Our findings demonstrate that novel synesthetic metaphors that follow conventional directionality are considered more common, more appropriate, and easier to comprehend than those that violate conventional mapping principles; they are also judged as more literal than those that do not follow conventional directionality. This study explores linguistic synesthesia from the perspective of comprehension of novel synesthetic metaphors, posits a pivotal position for mapping principles in synesthetic directionality, and supports an embodied account of linguistic synesthesia.

Keywords: conceptual mapping model; embodiment; linguistic synesthesia; mapping principle; novel metaphors
Corresponding author: Chu-Ren Huang, Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong, E-mail:

Funding source: Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Award Identifier / Grant number: Unassigned

Acknowledgments

The first and second authors would like to acknowledge the grant 1-ZVTL from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Thanks go to the three anonymous reviewers as well the editors for their insightful, constructive, and valuable suggestions and comments. Remaining errors are our sole responsibility.

Appendix

The complete set of stimuli used in the experiment.

Conditions Congruent novel metaphors (CNMs) Incongruent novel metaphors (INMs) Literal control (LIT)
Stimuli Directionality Stimuli Directionality Stimuli
Set 1 silky sound touch → hearing fragrant sound smell → hearing soothing sound
Set 2 prickly voice touch → hearing smelly voice smell → hearing hoarse voice
Set 3 mountainous roar vision → hearing spicy roar taste → hearing thunderous roar
Set 4 pale whisper vision → hearing bland whisper taste → hearing inaudible whisper
Set 5 shiny tune vision → hearing aromatic tune smell → hearing melodic tune
Set 6 fluffy color touch → vision melodious color hearing → vision pleasant color
Set 7 thorny gaze touch → vision deafening gaze hearing → vision unfriendly gaze
Set 8 savory perfume taste → smell rhythmic perfume hearing → smell fragrant perfume
Set 9 palatable aroma taste → smell dazzling aroma vision → smell delightful aroma
Set 10 rubbery taste touch → taste hoarse taste hearing → taste unpalatable taste

  1. Note. The bolded adjectives are the manipulation of the source, and the target is consistent across three conditions. Participants did not see any bolded words in the survey, and all the stimuli were presented randomly.

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Received: 2022-02-16
Accepted: 2023-02-01
Published Online: 2023-07-25

© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2022-0020
Schlagwörter für diesen Artikel
conceptual mapping model; embodiment; linguistic synesthesia; mapping principle; novel metaphors

Artikel in diesem Heft

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Editorial
  3. Editorial 2023
  4. Research Articles
  5. Tapped /r/ in RP: a corpus-based sociophonetic study across the twentieth century
  6. Revisiting English written VP-ellipsis and VP-substitution: a dependency-based analysis
  7. Agreeing objects in Zulu can be indefinite and non-specific
  8. On the semantics of (negated) approximative kaada in Classical Arabic: a case for embedded exhaustification
  9. Imperatives as persuasion strategies in political discourse
  10. Primate origins of discourse-managing gestures: the case of hand fling
  11. Basic word order typology revisited: a crosslinguistic quantitative study based on UD and WALS
  12. The effect of L2 German on grammatical gender access in L1 Polish: proficiency matters
  13. Validation of two measures for assessing English vocabulary knowledge on web-based testing platforms: brief assessments
  14. Validation of two measures for assessing English vocabulary knowledge on web-based testing platforms: long-form assessments
  15. Cerebral asymmetries in the processing of opaque compounds in L1 Polish and L2 English
  16. Are preschool children sensitive to the function of accessibility markers? A visual world study with German-speaking three- to four-year-olds
  17. Sensory experience ratings (SERs) for 1,130 Chinese words: relationships with other semantic and lexical psycholinguistic variables
  18. A corpus-based study of quoi in French native speech
  19. The overlooked effect of amplitude on within-speaker vowel variation
  20. Contextualized word senses: from attention to compositionality
  21. Words of scents: a linguistic analysis of online perfume reviews
  22. Constraction: a tool for the automatic extraction and interactive exploration of linguistic constructions
  23. The Red Hen Anonymizer and the Red Hen Protocol for de-identifying audiovisual recordings
  24. Novel metaphor and embodiment: comprehending novel synesthetic metaphors
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