Cover not available

In:Dynamism in Metaphor and Beyond
Edited by Herbert L. Colston, Teenie Matlock and Gerard J. Steen
[Metaphor in Language, Cognition, and Communication 9] 2022
► pp. 223–240

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
authorization required

Metaphor and elaboration in context

 | Oberlin College
 | Purchase College
Published online: 9 September 2022
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/milcc.9.12thi
Abstract
In this chapter, we situate recent studies of metaphor comprehension and metaphor framing under broader theories of discourse processing, drawing out the connections between classic work on narratives, schemas, and elaboration and contemporary research on metaphor. Our analysis emphasizes that language is used to solve coordination problems in a social-pragmatic context. That is, listeners actively use language in combination with other sources of information (prior knowledge, gesture, and so on) to construct mental models in working memory that they can use to make decisions and act in a dynamic social world. Just as reading a sentence like “John went to a restaurant” calls to mind general knowledge about restaurants – which helps the listener build a richer “online” representation of the event than is communicated in the linguistic input alone – so too does reading about a “crime epidemic” call to mind salient schematic knowledge associated with the source domain (VIRUS), which helps the listener build a richer representation of the target domain (CRIME) that can drive decision-making.
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Metaphoric mappings in language & thought
  • Metaphor framing in decision-making
  • Are metaphors just lexical primes?
  • Interim summary
  • What schematic elaboration leaves out
  • Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
References (96)
References
Barsalou, L. W. (2008). Grounded cognition. Annual Review of Psychology, 59, 617–645. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bartlett, F. C. (1932). Remembering: An experimental and social study. Cambridge: Cambridge University.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bergen, B. K. (2012). Louder than words: The new science of how the mind makes meaning. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Boroditsky, L. (2000). Metaphoric structuring: Understanding time through spatial metaphors. Cognition, 75(1), 1–28. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bowdle, B. F., & Gentner, D. (2005). The career of metaphor. Psychological review, 112(1), 193–216. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bower, G. H., Black, J. B., & Turner, T. J. (1979). Scripts in memory for text. Cognitive Psychology, 11(2), 177–220. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bowers, J. W., & Osborn, M. M. (1966). Attitudinal effects of selected types of concluding metaphors in persuasive speeches. Communications Monographs, 33(2), 147–155. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bransford, J. D., & Johnson, M. K. (1972). Contextual prerequisites for understanding: Some investigations of comprehension and recall. Journal of verbal learning and verbal behavior, 11(6), 717–726. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Casasanto, D., & Gijssels, T. (2015). What makes a metaphor an embodied metaphor? Linguistics Vanguard, 1(1), 327–337. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chabris, C. F., Heck, P. R., Mandart, J., Benjamin, D. J., & Simons, D. J. (2018). No Evidence That Experiencing Physical Warmth Promotes Interpersonal Warmth. Social PsychologyGoogle Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Christmann, U., & Göhring, A. L. (2016). A German-language replication study analysing the role of figurative speech in reasoning. Scientific data, 3, 160098. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Citron, F. M., & Goldberg, A. E. (2014). Metaphorical sentences are more emotionally engaging than their literal counterparts. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 26(11), 2585–2595. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Clark, H. H. (1973). Space, time, semantics, and the child. In Cognitive Development and the Acquisition of Language (Moore, T., ed.), pp. 27–63, Academic Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(1996). Using Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Doumas, L., Hummel, J., & Sandhofer, C. (2008). A theory of the discovery and predication of relational concepts. Psychological Review, 115, 1–43. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Elmore, K. C., & Luna-Lucero, M. (2017). Light bulbs or seeds? How metaphors for ideas influence judgments about genius. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 8(2), 200–208. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Falkenhainer, B., Forbus, K. D., & Gentner, D. (1989). The structure-mapping engine: Algorithm and examples. Artificial Intelligence, 41, 1–63. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Feldman, J. (2008). From molecule to metaphor: A neural theory of language. MIT pressGoogle Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Flusberg, S. J., Lauria, M., Balko, S., & Thibodeau, P. H. (2020). Effects of Communication Modality and Speaker Identity on Metaphor Framing. Metaphor and Symbol, 1–17. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Flusberg, S. J., Matlock, T., & Thibodeau, P. H. (2017). Metaphors for the war (or race) against climate change. Environmental Communication, 11(6), 769–783. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2018). War metaphors in public discourse. Metaphor and Symbol, 33(1), 1–18. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Flusberg, S. J., Thibodeau, P. H., Sternberg, D. A., & Glick, J. J. (2010). A connectionist approach to embodied conceptual metaphor. Frontiers in Psychology, 1:12. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gentner, D. (1983). Structure-mapping: A theoretical framework for analogy. Cognitive Science, 7(2), 155–170. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gentner, D., & Asmuth, J. (2017). Metaphoric extension, relational categories, and abstraction. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 1–10.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gentner, D., Imai, M., & Boroditsky, L. (2002). As time goes by: Evidence for two systems in processing space→ time metaphors. Language and cognitive processes, 17(5), 537–565. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gibbs Jr, R. W. (1984). Literal meaning and psychological theory. Cognitive Science, 8(3), 275–304. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(1994). The poetics of mind: Figurative thought, language, and understanding. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(1996). Why many concepts are metaphorical. Cognition, 61(3), 309–319. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2005). Embodiment and cognitive science. Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2006). Metaphor interpretation as embodied simulation. Mind & Language, 21(3), 434–458. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2011). Evaluating conceptual metaphor theory. Discourse Processes, 48(8), 529–562. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gibbs Jr, R. W., & Colston, H. L. (2012). Interpreting figurative meaning. Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gibbs Jr, R. W., & Gerrig, R. J. (1989). How context makes metaphor comprehension seem ‘special’. Metaphor and Symbol, 4(3), 145–158. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gibbs Jr, R. W., Lima, P. L. C., & Francozo, E. (2004). Metaphor is grounded in embodied experience. Journal of pragmatics, 36(7), 1189–1210. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gibbs, R. W., Jr., & Matlock, T. (2008). Metaphor, imagination, and simulation: Psycholinguistic evidence. In R. W. Gibbs, Jr. (Ed.), The Cambridge handbook of metaphor and thought (pp. 161–176). New York, NY, US: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gibbs, R. W. (2015). Counting Metaphors: What Does this Reveal about Language and Thought?. Cognitive Semantics, 1(2), 155–177. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2017). Metaphor Wars. Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Glucksberg, S. (2001). Understanding Figurative Language: From Metaphors to Idioms. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Graesser, A. C., Millis, K. K., & Zwaan, R. A. (1997). Discourse comprehension. Annual Review of Psychology, 48(1), 163–189. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Grice, P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In P. Cole and J. Morgan (Eds.) Syntax and Semantics (pp. 41–58). New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hauser, D. J., & Schwarz, N. (2015). The war on prevention: Bellicose cancer metaphors hurt (some) prevention intentions. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 41(1), 66–77. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hendricks, R. K., Demjén, Z., Semino, E., & Boroditsky, L. (2018). Emotional implications of metaphor: Consequences of metaphor framing for mindset about cancer. Metaphor & Symbol, 33(4), 267–279. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hitchon, J. C. (1997). The locus of metaphorical persuasion: An empirical test. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 74(1), 55–68. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Holyoak, K. J., & Stamenković, D. (2018). Metaphor comprehension: A critical review of theories and evidence. Psychological bulletin, 144(6), 641. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hummel, J. E., & Holyoak, K. J. (1997). Distributed representations of structure: A theory of analogical access and mapping. Psychological Review, 104, 427–466. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Johnson, J. T., & Taylor, S. E. (1981). The effect of metaphor on political attitudes. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 2(4), 305–316. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Keefer, L. A., Landau, M. J., Sullivan, D., & Rothschild, Z. K. (2014). Embodied metaphor and abstract problem solving: Testing a metaphoric fit hypothesis in the health domain. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 55, 12–20. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Keysar, B., Shen, Y., Glucksberg, S., & Horton, W. S. (2000). Conventional language: How metaphorical is it?. Journal of Memory and Language, 43(4), 576–593. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kintsch, W., & Van Dijk, T. A. (1978). Toward a model of text comprehension and production. Psychological Review, 85(5), 363. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kollias, P. & McClelland, J. L. (2013). Context, cortex, and associations: A connectionist developmental approach to verbal analogies. Frontiers in Psychology, 4, 857. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lakens, D. (2014). Grounding social embodiment. Social Cognition, 32, 168–183. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1999). Philosophy in the flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to western thought (Vol. 28). New York: Basic books.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Landau, M. J., Keefer, L. A., & Swanson, T. J. (2017). “Undoing” a Rhetorical Metaphor: Testing the Metaphor Extension Strategy. Metaphor and Symbol, 32(2), 63–83. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Landau, M. J., Sullivan, D., & Greenberg, J. (2009). Evidence that self-relevant motives and metaphoric framing interact to influence political and social attitudes. Psychological Science, 20(11), 1421–1427. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lee, S. W. S. & Schwarz, N. (2014). Metaphor in judgment and decision-making. In Landau, M. E., Robinson, M. D., & Meier, B. P. (eds.) The power of metaphor: Examining its influence on social life. American Psychological Association, 85–108. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lee, S. W., & Schwarz, N. (2012). Bidirectionality, mediation, and moderation of metaphorical effects: The embodiment of social suspicion and fishy smells. Journal of personality and social psychology, 103(5), 737–749. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Leech, R., Mareschal, D., & Cooper, R. (2008). Analogy as relational priming: A developmental and computational perspective on the origins of a complex cognitive skill. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 31, 357–378. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mandler, J. M. (2014). Stories, scripts, and scenes: Aspects of schema theory. Psychology Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McGlone, M. S. (2007). What is the explanatory value of a conceptual metaphor? Language & Communication, 27(2), 109–126. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2011). Hyperbole, homunculi, and hindsight bias: An alternative evaluation of conceptual metaphor theory. Discourse Processes, 48(8), 563–574. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McGlone, M. S., & Harding, J. L. (1998). Back (or forward?) to the future: The role of perspective in temporal language comprehension. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 24(5), 1211–1223.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Meier, B. P., Schnall, S., Schwarz, N., & Bargh, J. A. (2012). Embodiment in social psychology. Topics in Cognitive Science, 4, 705–716. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Minsky, M. (1975). A framework for representing knowledge. In The Psychology of Computer Vision, P. H. Winston (Ed.), pp. 211–277. McGraw-Hill, New York.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Murphy, G. L. (1996). On metaphoric representation. Cognition, 60(2), 173–204. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(1997). Reasons to doubt the present evidence for metaphoric representation. Cognition, 62(1), 99–108. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nayak, N. P., & Gibbs, R. W. (1990). Conceptual knowledge in the interpretation of idioms. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 119(3), 315–330. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pérez-Sobrino, P., & Julich, N. (2014). Let’s talk music: A corpus-based account of musical motion. Metaphor and Symbol, 29(4), 298–315. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pinker, S. (2006). Block that metaphor. The New Republic. Retrieved Feb 14, 2019: [URL]
(2007). The stuff of thought: Language as a window into human nature. Penguin.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Read, S. J., Cesa, I. L., Jones, D. K., & Collins, N. L. (1990). When is the federal budget like a baby? Metaphor in political rhetoric. Metaphor and Symbol, 5(3), 125–149. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Reali, F., Soriano, T., & Rodríguez, D. (2016). How we think about depression: The role of linguistic framing. Revista Latinoamericana de Psicología, 48(2), 127–136. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Reijnierse, W. G., Burgers, C., Krennmayr, T., & Steen, G. J. (2015). How viruses and beasts affect our opinions (or not): The role of extendedness in metaphorical framing. Metaphor and the Social World, 5(2), 245–263. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Robins, S., & Mayer, R. E. (2000). The metaphor framing effect: Metaphorical reasoning about text-based dilemmas. Discourse Processes, 30(1), 57–86. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rumelhart, D. E. (1975). Notes on a schema for stories. In Representation and understanding (pp. 211–236). Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schank, R. C., & Abelson, R. P. (1977). Scripts, plans, goals, and understanding: An inquiry into human knowledge structures. Psychology Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Siltanen, S. A. (1981). The persuasiveness of metaphor: A replication and extension. Southern Speech Communication Journal, 47(1), 67–83. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sopory, P., & Dillard, J. P. (2002). The persuasive effects of metaphor: A meta-analysis. Human Communication Research, 28(3), 382–419. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sperber, D., & Wilson, D. (1987). Précis of relevance: Communication and cognition. Behavioral and brain sciences, 10(4), 697–710. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Steen, G. (2008). The paradox of metaphor: Why we need a three-dimensional model of metaphor. Metaphor and Symbol, 23(4), 213–241. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Steen, G. J., Reijnierse, W. G., & Burgers, C. (2014). When do natural language metaphors influence reasoning? A follow-up study to Thibodeau and Boroditsky (2013). PloS one, 9(12), e113536. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Thibodeau, P. H. (2016). Extended metaphors are the home runs of persuasion: Don’t fumble the phrase. Metaphor and Symbol, 31(2), 53–72. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Thibodeau, P. H., & Boroditsky, L. (2011). Metaphors we think with: The role of metaphor in reasoning. PloS one, 6(2), e16782. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2013). Natural language metaphors covertly influence reasoning. PloS one, 8(1), e52961. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2015). Measuring effects of metaphor in a dynamic opinion landscape. PloS one, 10(7), e0133939. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Thibodeau, P. H., Crow, L., & Flusberg, S. J. (2017). The metaphor police: A case study of the role of metaphor in explanation. Psychonomic bulletin & review, 24(5), 1375–1386. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Thibodeau, P. H., & Durgin, F. H. (2008). Productive figurative communication: Conventional metaphors facilitate the comprehension of related novel metaphors. Journal of Memory and Language, 58(2), 521–540. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Thibodeau, P. H., & Flusberg, S. J. (2017). Metaphorical Accounting: How Framing the Federal Budget Like a Household’s Affects Voting Intentions. Cognitive science, 41, 1168–1182. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Thibodeau, P. H., Flusberg, S. J., Glick, J. J., & Sternberg, D. A. (2013). An emergent approach to analogical inference. Connection Science, 25, 27–53. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Thibodeau, P., Winneg, A., Frantz, C., & Flusberg, S. (2016). The mind is an ecosystem. Metaphor and the Social World, 6(2), 225–242. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1981). The framing of decisions and the psychology of choice. science, 211(4481), 453–458. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vendetti, M. S., Wu, A., & Holyoak, K. J. (2014). Far-out thinking: Generating solutions to distant analogies promotes relational thinking. Psychological Science, 25(4), 928–933. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Williams, L. E., & Bargh, J. A. (2008). Experiencing physical warmth promotes interpersonal warmth. Science, 322(5901), 606–607. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (5)

Cited by five other publications

Marghetis, Tyler & Teenie Matlock
2025. Metaphorical Framing of Wildfires Shapes What They Are, How They Act, and How We Should Respond. Metaphor and Symbol 40:1 ► pp. 38 ff. DOI logo
Altamimi, Sadiq
2024. The Coalition of the Willing and Pro-NATOism: Russia–Ukraine Anti-war Discourse. Cognitive Studies | Études cognitives :24 DOI logo
Boieblan, Mostafa
2024. Grounded cognition and the role of musical expertise in shaping synesthetic metaphors among a music speech community. International Journal of Language and Culture 11:2 ► pp. 180 ff. DOI logo
Flusberg, Stephen J., Kevin J. Holmes, Paul H. Thibodeau, Robin L. Nabi & Teenie Matlock
2024. The Psychology of Framing: How Everyday Language Shapes the Way We Think, Feel, and Act. Psychological Science in the Public Interest 25:3 ► pp. 105 ff. DOI logo
Iritspukhova, Nazi
2023. Metaphor and English Promotional Tourism Discourse: Systematic-narrative Hybrid Literature Review and Future Research Areas. Anglica. An International Journal of English Studies :32/2 ► pp. 93 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 27 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue