Metaphor and readers’ attributions of intimacy

Character Intimacy Influences the Processing of Metaphoric Utterances During Narrative Comprehension

“…The 20 experimental items used in Experiment 1 were modified versions of the items from Horton (2007), which in turn were based on stimuli used by Onishi and Murphy (1993). The stories all followed the same general structure (see Table 1 for examples).…”

“…For this judgment, participants were presented with a question such as, "How well do you think Emily and the saleswoman know each other?" along with the same 7-point scale as that used in Horton (2007), ranging from 0 = no prior relationship to 6 = extremely well. Participants used a keypad to enter the number of their choice.…”

“…Research from social cognition has shown that people readily use relatively narrow behavioral evidence to reason accurately about others' relationships (Ambady, Bernieri, & Richeson, 2000;Costanzo & Archer, 1989). Using a similar logic, Horton (2007) presented individuals with brief narratives describing interactions between two characters, and examined whether readers, as external observers of the narrative world, would perceive closer relationships when these interactions included metaphorical language. The characters' prior relationship was always ambiguous, and at a critical point in the interaction, one character produced a literal or a metaphoric reference to an entity from the preceding discourse context.…”

“…At the same time, reading about an interaction between close friends may facilitate processing of metaphorical utterances. We already know that readers are sensitive to the fact that speakers are more likely to use figurative language in particular social contexts (Horton, 2007). Experiment 1 investigates whether this sensitivity to the intimacy function of metaphor can influence metaphor processing during moment-by-moment narrative comprehension.…”

“…The previous work by Horton (2007) investigated how readers' off-line judgments about story characters' relationships are influenced by the presence of figurative language. The present studies investigate whether readers' online processing of metaphorical and literal utterances is influenced by what they know about the social context.…”