Project Proposer/s:
Jeannette Littlemore (EDACS); John Barnden (Computer Science); Eirini Mavritsaki (BCU)
School/Dept:
EDACS/ELAL
Project Title:
Exploring different types of creativity in metaphor
Project Summary
This is a pilot project that aims to make initial steps towards uncovering differences in the way people respond to different types of (partially) creative metaphor by means of psycholinguistic experimentation.
Metaphor is the phenomenon of thinking, talking or otherwise communicating about something as if it were something else, as in the phrase “the plan [of action] is rigid”, viewing the plan as if it were a physical object, and in particular an inflexible one (Patterson, 2016). A metaphorical expression can be conventional and uncreative—as in that example, because plans and many other abstract things are often talked about as being physical objects with qualities such as rigidity. But a metaphorical expression can also be unconventional and creative in a variety of ways and to different degrees (Kovecses, 2010), and in particular as follows.
One way of being creative, usually to a moderate degree, is illustrated by “the plan is made of hardened steel.” This relies on the same general metaphorical view as “the plan is rigid” does, but elaborates it with additional, uncommon detail (which in this case intensifies the rigidity of the plan). For convenience we can call this phenomenon novel elaboration [of a familiar view]. The degree of creativity is the more extreme the richer and more unusual the elaborations. But a qualitatively different and often extreme way of being creative would be illustrated by “the plan is violet,” which in a particular context might mean that the plan of action in question is a mixture of very different elements but still pleasing—just as violet might be considered a pleasing mix of red and blue. This sentence is only distantly related, if at all, to relevant, familiar metaphorical views that could apply to plans, and requires the establishment of a novel analogy. A convenient label for this phenomenon is novel view. (The two labels do not, however, imply a stark division between the phenomena.)
Two main research questions are (1) whether, and the extent to which, people have more difficulty in understanding the novel-view type of metaphor than the novel-elaboration type and (2) whether, and the extent to which, there is more variability in people’s interpretations in the novel-view case compared to the novel-elaboration case. We do expect there to be more difficulty and more variability. We expect greater difficulty to show up as extra time needed for understanding and an increased occurrence of failures to come up with an appropriate interpretation (Coney & Lange, 2006; Kovecses, 2010; Patterson, 2016).
The experiments will use a protocol and set of metaphor examples previously used in an earlier part of the same study, conducted in 2015. The study was separated in three parts. The first part used 4 levels of metaphoric expression comprised by two words that were self-paced read (Coney & Lange, 2006) and the time to read the expression was recorded. Then the participant was describing the expression. The last part of the experiment included a presentation of 4 pictures, one of them was selected to match the metaphorical meaning and a second one the literal meaning of the expression, the reaction times for identifying the picture that matched the meaning of expression presented and answers were recorded (Brownell et al., 1990). The preliminary results of this study showed it took longer for novel metaphor to be fully understood (Figure 1), that follows above predictions.
Participants in this previous study were 65 and over to match the patient group of 30 stroke victims. To be able to publish the outcomes of the first study we need to collect another 20 participants (65 and over). We are also taking the opportunity to extend the scope of the study by involving 30 student participants under age 65 and without stroke or similar pathology, drawn from EDACS and Computer Science at Birmingham and from Psychology at BCU. Therefore, there will be fifty participants in all.
What the researcher will do
The researcher will run the above described experiment in which Reaction Time and answers will be recorded in the ELAL Psycholinguistics Lab in which participants have to identify meanings of metaphors with different levels of creativity as above. The tests will last approximately 40 minutes per participant.
The researcher will also help to organise the schedule of participants and to analyse the results.
Skills required by the Placement holder
- Strong interpersonal skills
- An understanding of experimental methods.
How will your Project benefit the Placement holder?
This project offers an opportunity to:
- Learn about how psycholinguistic experiments work and about some of the cognitive and linguistic issues they aim to address.
- Learn about open research problems in figurative language understanding.
- Work with a range of participants.
- Develop experimental-result analysis skills.
- Develop organisational and team skills.