Contemporary theories of metaphor differ in many dimensions, including the discipline they originate from (e.g., linguistics, psychology, philosophy), and whether they are developed primarily within a cognitive or pragmatic theoretical framework. This article evaluates two directions of metaphor research within linguistics, cognitive linguistics and relevance theory, which both aim to capture essential aspects of the reason for metaphor, and how people ordinarily use and understand metaphor in daily life. We argue, contrary to most received opinion, that cognitive linguistics and relevance theory provide complementary perspectives on metaphor. Both theories offer important insights into the role of metaphor in cognition and language use, and suggest detailed hypotheses on metaphor understanding that surely are part of a comprehensive theory of metaphor. #
This paper explores the trade-off between cognitive effort and cognitive effects during immediate metaphor comprehension. We specifi cally evaluate the fundamental claim of relevance theory that metaphor understanding, like all utterance interpretation, is constrained by the presumption of optimal relevance ( Sperber and Wilson, 1995 , p. 270): the ostensive stimulus is relevant enough for it to be worth the addressee ' s effort to process it, and the ostensive stimulus is the most relevant one compatible with the communicator ' s abilities and preferences. One important implication of optimal relevance is that listeners follow a path of least effort and stop processing at the fi rst interpretation that satisfi es their expectation of relevance. They do this by trying to minimize cognitive effort while maximizing cognitive effects. Some relevance theory scholars suggest that metaphors should require additional cognitive effort to be understood, and that in return they yield more cognitive effects than does literal speech. Others claim that metaphors may be understood quickly, as soon as people infer enough effects for the speaker ' s utterance to meet their expectation of optimal relevance. Our analysis of the experimental evidence suggests that there is no systematic relationship between cognitive effort and cognitive effects in metaphor comprehension. We conclude that relevance theory need not make any general predictions about the effort needed to comprehend metaphors. Nevertheless, relevance theory is consistent with many of the fi ndings in psycholinguistics on metaphor understanding, and can account for aspects of metaphor understanding that no other theory can explain.
When speakers utter metaphors, such as "Lawyers are also sharks," they often intend to communicate messages beyond those expressed by the metaphorical meaning of these expressions. For instance, in some circumstances, a speaker may state "Lawyers are also sharks" to strengthen a previous speaker"s negative beliefs about lawyers, to add new information about lawyers to listeners to some context, or even to contradict a previous speaker"s positive assertions about lawyers. In each case, speaking metaphorically communicates one of these three social messages that are relevant to the ongoing discourse. At the same time, speaking metaphorically may express other social and affective information that is , Psychology Department,
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