The present article focuses on the issue of directionality in three figures of speech, simile, synaesthesia, and zeugma, s it appears in the poetic use of these figures. First, an attempt is made to isolate a certain (structural) level αϊ which these figures of speech manifest an extremely selective preference for certain structural options over others, beyond a specific context (text, poet t school, or period). A textual analysis of extensive poetic corpora corroborates this selective use, Traditional accountsfail to accountfor such preferences, given their "contextual" orientation, whereas the phenomena under discussion go beyond any relevant specific context. By contrast, the article provides a cognitive accountfor this selective use, arguing that the figures involved conform to a certain cognitive constraint determining their directionality. Empirical data are introduced, based on various psychological tasks> suggesting that the structures selectedare,from a cognitive standpoint, "more basic" (e.g., are easier to comprehend and recall, and are more easily conventionalized) than those ruled out. The reason these structures are "more basic" than their counterparts is that they meet a general cognitive constraint. Aformulation and a theoretical account of this constraint areproposed and discussed.
Synaesthesia (e.g. 'sweet silence') consists of the mapping of properties from one modality to another. The present article introduces a cognitive account regarding the directionality of the mapping in poetic discourse. Firstly, we suggest that mapping from lower modalities onto higher ones (e.g. from 'touch' onto 'sight') is more frequently used in poetic discourse than the opposite mapping (i.e. from higher to lower modalities). The findings of a textual analysis of a large-scale poetic corpus are introduced, which support this proposal, and reveal that the 'low to high' mapping is more frequently used than its inverse, and that this tendency is a universal one (across national boundaries and historical periods). Secondly, we propose a cognitive account for this universal tendency according to which the 'low to high' mapping conforms to (while its inverse violates) the following cognitive constraint: mapping from a more accessible concept onto a less accessible one is more natural than its inverse. The findings of an interpretation experiment are introduced, which provide some support for this account by suggesting that the more frequently used structure (i.e. the mapping from the more accessible to the less accessible sense) is easier to comprehend than its inverse. We conclude by proposing that aspects of poetic language are themselves constrained by general cognitive constraints.
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