Preschoolers’ Metaphor Comprehension. Methodological Issues in Experimental Pragmatics

Abstract

There exists a variety of theoretical frameworks attempting to account for the nature, comprehension, and use of everyday metaphor. Since these frameworks use different operational definitions of metaphor, they tend to view the psycholinguistic process of comprehending metaphorical language and the various factors that may play a role in metaphor processing from different perspectives. The first part of the paper briefly summarizes four of these theoretical approaches to everyday metaphor (Conceptual Metaphor Theory, Similarity Theory, Relevance Theory, and the Optimal Innovation Hypothesis) and discusses some consequences of the diversity of theories that present a puzzle or prove to be undesirable for empirical research. The areas discussed include the various dimensions of metaphor categorization, the role of linguistic context, and the effects of linguistic and non-linguistic cognitive skills of the comprehender. Drawing on the discussion in the first part, the second part of the paper outlines an experiment designed with reference to Giora’s Optimal Innovation Hypothesis in which preschoolers’ metaphor comprehension is explored as a function of the familiarity of the expression’s literal meaning and the perceived creativity of the metaphorical use. This experiment further explores the relationship between children’s metaphor comprehension and other cognitive abilities such as intention attribution. This method allows us to quantify metaphor comprehension and preference in the context of pragmatic development and general cognitive skills.