Elsevier

Cognition

Volume 62, Issue 1, 2 February 1997, Pages 99-108
Cognition

Discussion
Reasons to doubt the present evidence for metaphoric representation

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Section snippets

Empirical evidence

Gibbs provides further examples of studies that he feels support the claim for metaphoric thought. My reaction to much of this work is similar to what I said in my earlier article, so I won't respond on a point-by-point basis here. I do wish to raise two more general concerns, however. An empirical test of literal and metaphoric theories of cognition requires that both the literal and metaphoric views be articulated well enough to permit comparison. I will argue in this section that both of

Linguistic data

In his reply, Gibbs defends the use of primarily linguistic data. I won't repeat most of my concerns here, but I will try to clarify my objection. As Gibbs points out (in footnote 1), much mainstream research on concepts has used linguistic materials. However, this is not linguistic evidence of the sort I criticized in my article. The dependent measures of studies of concepts include category learning and formation (e.g., Kruschke, 1992; Nosofsky, 1988; Spalding and Murphy, 1996), induction (

Idioms

One domain that receives considerable attention in Gibbs's remarks is that of idioms, an area in which he has done much interesting work. He argues that neither historical convention nor the literal meanings of the idioms can explain why they have the idiomatic meanings they do. Again, I cannot really review all this work in the space available, and so I won't engage in a detailed debate here. However, I will point out that in addition to the more positive cases that Gibbs cites are many kinds

Conceptual consistency

I think that the strongest point that Gibbs makes is his argument that concepts may not be entirely consistent entities that fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. I had argued that it is hard to understand how the different metaphors for a given domain could be structuring the same concept, because the concept of love one gets from LOVE IS A FINANCIAL TRANSACTION is so different from the concept one gets from LOVE IS INSANITY. I think that both of us may be right (or wrong) here. I must admit that

Asymmetry and similarity

In his discussion of the directionality issue – why some metaphors occur in one direction and not others (e.g., LOVE IS A JOURNEY but less often, A JOURNEY IS LOVE) – Gibbs points out that my mention of typicality as a cause of directionality would not explain why people think of love in terms of journeys rather than vice versa. Perhaps I placed too much emphasis on typicality as a determinant of directionality in my article. As my example of Michael Jordan and the college basketball player

Conclusion

I would like to close by again making an appeal for more specific models of metaphoric concepts. Gibbs ends his reply by asking that cognitive psychologists actively test for the possibility of metaphoric representations in the domains of their interest. This would certainly be helpful, but it is not yet entirely clear to me how to design such tests. Until there are some specific models of metaphoric concepts, it will be difficult to know whether they can explain findings of apparent metaphoric

Acknowledgements

The writing of this article was supported by NIMH grant MH41704. I would like to thank Raymond Gibbs for conversations regarding our interchange, and Mary Lassaline and Brian Ross for helpful comments on a draft of the article.

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