Imposed Metaphoricity

We introduce a hitherto overlooked phenomenon in the cognitive and psycholinguistic study of metaphors that we termed imposed metaphoricity. We propose that a metaphorical reading can be imposed on a given expression regardless of its semantic content. We suggest that there is a class of constructions (e.g., this X is such a Y or what a Y this X is) that impose metaphorical interpretation. We present findings from three experiments and from corpus-based analyses that support our proposal. Experiments 1–2 compared interpretations of expressions that can have both a literal and a metaphorical meaning (e.g., this book is an encyclopedia) when embedded in a standard metaphorical form and in a form that imposes metaphoricity. In Experiment 3 we examine reaction time to such forms in an attempt to identify interference of form with early metaphorical processing. Two corpus-based analyses characterize the use of these two metaphorical constructions in natural language. We discuss the independence of metaphoricity from semantics, as demonstrated by forms that impose metaphorical interpretations.