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Article published In: New Developments in Relevance Theory
Edited by Manuel Padilla Cruz and Agnieszka Piskorska
[Pragmatics & Cognition 28:2] 2021
► pp. 299–320

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Metaphor and mental shortcuts

The role of non-propositional effects

 | National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
 | National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
Published online: 27 June 2022
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/pc.21009.ifa
Abstract
Cognitive-pragmatic approaches to how metaphors are understood view the activation of perceptual or motor effects as inferred (Steinhart, Eric C. 2001. Metaphor and inference. In Eric C. Steinhart (ed.), The logic of metaphor: Analogous parts of possible worlds, 183–208. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Bergen, Benjamin. 2005. Mental simulation in literal and figurative language understanding. In Seana Coulson & Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk (eds.), The literal and non-literal in language and thought, 255–280. Berlin: Peter Lang.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Wilson, Deirdre & Robyn Carston. 2006. Metaphor, relevance and the ‘emergent property’. Mind & Language 211. 404–433. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; . 2010. Metaphor: Ad hoc concepts, literal meaning and mental images. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 1101. 295–321. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Gibbs, Raymond W. & Ana Cristina Pelosi Silva de Macedo. 2010. Metaphor and embodied cognition. DELTA Documentação de Estudos em Lingüística Teórica e Aplicada 261. 67–700. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; . 2019. Pragmatics and the challenge of ‘non-propositional’ effects. Journal of Pragmatics 1451. 31–38. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). Crucially, inferences elicit conceptual representations, e.g. in the form of implicatures, and/or mental simulations, e.g. in the form of imagery, memory, an impression and other private elements. Emotional effects, being non-conceptual, must be left out of this picture. But evidence in neurolinguistics and psycholinguistics has shown that metaphors activate brain regions linked to emotions (for a review, see Ifantidou, Elly. 2019. Relevance and metaphor understanding in a second language. In Kate Scott, Billy Clark & Robyn Carston (eds.), Relevance: Pragmatics and interpretation, 218–230. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; . 2020. Language that conveys emotion: A commentary on Hinojosa, Moreno and Ferré (2019). Language, Cognition and Neuroscience 351. 865–867. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), and that in L2, in the absence of fully-propositional meaning (due to unknown words), metaphors yield meaningful interpretations by evoking imagery, impressions, emotions (Ifantidou, Elly. 2019. Relevance and metaphor understanding in a second language. In Kate Scott, Billy Clark & Robyn Carston (eds.), Relevance: Pragmatics and interpretation, 218–230. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, . 2021a. Non-propositional effects in verbal communication: The case of metaphor. In Tim Wharton & Caroline Jagoe (eds.), Special issue in Journal of Pragmatics 18 (1). 6–16. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, . 2021b. Metaphor comprehension: Meaning and beyond. In Elly Ifantidou, Louis de Saussure & Tim Wharton (eds.), Beyond meaning, 61–75. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Ifantidou, Elly & Anna Hatzidaki. 2019. Metaphor comprehension in L2: Meaning, images and emotions. Journal of Pragmatics 1491. 78–90. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). Drawing on relevance-theoretic views, we would like to argue that metaphors are processed in not entirely propositional terms. Subjective experience heuristics (originally proposed as “availability heuristic” by Tversky, Amos & Daniel Kahneman, D. 1974. Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases. Science 185 (4157). 1124–1131. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Schwarzand, Norbert & Michaela Wänke. 2002. Experiential and contextual heuristics in frequency judgement: Ease of recall and response scales. In Peter Sedlmeier & Tilmann Betsch (eds.), Etc. frequency processing and cognition, 89–108. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; “affect heuristic” by Zajonc, Robert B. 1980. Feeling and thinking: Preferences need no inferences. American Psychologist 351. 151–175. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) allows making rapid responses by absorbing emotions, imagery, impressions, into the interpretation process, an ability which outweighs (the need for) standard inferential reasoning processes. Such a position is likely to apply to non-metaphorical language, too and thus pervade linguistic processing in general.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction: The ‘affective’ turn in pragmatic inferencing
  • 2.The nature of inference: What it involves
  • 3.Are metaphors understood in entirely propositional terms?
  • 4.Relevance theory and non-propositional content
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
References (83)
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