The Development of Metaphoric Competence: A Symposium

Abstract

This symposium includes research on children’s comprehension and production of figurative language, including metaphor, simile, and allegory. Dent introduces the symposium, defining terms (topic, vehicle, ground) and noting recent emphases on cognitive and pragmatic aspects of figurative language. In the first study, Vosniadou and Ortony showed that 6-year-olds were better able to act out than paraphrase metaphorical sentences. In the second study, Dent and Ledbetter showed 5-, 7-, and 10-year-olds filmed scenes that could be paired literally or metaphorically. Metaphoric pairings increased with age, and were more frequent for moving than stationary objects. Subsequently, metaphors based on the films were better comprehended than unrelated metaphors. In the third study, Windmueller et al. asked 6-, 8-, 10-, and 12-year-olds to match allegorical stories to their literal referents and metaphorical topics to their appropriate vehicles. The number of correct matches increased with age. Children were able to explain allegories before they could explain analogous metaphors. In a concluding discussion, Verbrugge sets forth four conclusions two methodological, two developmental – that are supported by the research findings.

An ecological approach to language development: An alternative functionalism

“…Finally, the figurative term in metaphoric utterances often refers to concrete, familiar objects or events (Dent, 1984;Vosniadou, 1987), as in the examples above, that is, "cotton candy" and "Venus fly trap. ' ' Empirical work from an ecological approach has focused on metaphor and the perceptual basis of language (Verbrugge & McCarrell, 1977;Verbrugge, 1980Verbrugge, , 1985Dent, 1984Dent, , 1987aDent, , 1987bDent, , 1987cDent, , 1987d. The developmental work has stud-ied how children use metaphor to project for others their own perceptions and knowledge.…”

“…I will discuss research on two examples of representation in the environment, the emergence of linguistic representation in the first-language learner and the nature and development of metaphor. The emergence of linguistic representation provides information on how children learn sign relations that are perceptible; metaphor is a type of language in which reference to one kind of thing, almost always a perceptible object or event (Dent, 1987a), is used to talk about a different kind of thing.…”

“…Empirical work from an ecological approach has focused on metaphor and the perceptual basis of language (Verbrugge & McCarrell, 1977;Verbrugge, 1980Verbrugge, , 1985Dent, 1984Dent, , 1987aDent, , 1987bDent, , 1987cDent, , 1987d. The developmental work has stud-ied how children use metaphor to project for others their own perceptions and knowledge.…”