Article
Metaphorical Salience in Artistic Text Processing: Evidence From Eye Movement
Perception 2015, 0(0) 1–5 ! The Author(s) 2015 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0301006615596692 pec.sagepub.com
E. G. Novikova Tomsk State University, Tomsk, Russia
A. Janyan Tomsk State University, Tomsk, Russia New Bulgarian University, Sofia, Bulgaria
O. V. Tsaregorodtseva Tomsk State University, Tomsk, Russia
Abstract The study aimed to explore processing difference between a literal phrase and a metaphoric one. Unlike artificially created stimuli in most experimental research, an artistic text with an ambiguous binary metaphoric phrase was used. Eye tracking methodology was applied. Results suggested difference between the two types of phrases in both early and late processing measures. Keywords metaphor processing, literality, lexical ambiguity, eye tracking
Introduction Most theories and research on figurative meaning and ambiguity consider literal and figurative meaning in ensemble, for example, the classical example kick the bucket, an idiom that allows both literal and figurative interpretation. Resolution of such an ambiguity may highly depend on context, meaning frequency, conventionality, familiarity, meaning salience (Giora, 2003; see also Tynyanov, 1924/2007, on linguistic theory of salience of some factors on the cost of others). Theories of figurative language processing diverge on a number of issues, and detailed reviews of relevant literature can be found elsewhere. One question that has raised considerable controversy addresses the precedence of literal versus nonliteral processing. On some views, comprehenders bypass literal meaning and access figurative meaning directly (Gibbs, 1984), while on others, temporal priority is given to linguistic analysis but only until enough information is available to prompt recognition of the figurative nature of the string Corresponding author: E. G. Novikova, Tomsk State University, Tomsk, Russia. Email: [email protected]
2
Perception 0(0)
(Cacciari & Tabossi, 1988). Understanding figurative language in this case would involve suppression of the literal meaning that is activated prior to access to the figurative one. On the other hand, except widely discussed and researched the binary literal-figurative division, a figurative–figurative division is hardly ‘‘touched’’ by experimenters. Note, that this ‘‘division’’ is analogous to widely researched lexical ambiguity (e.g., Sereno, Pacht, & Rayner, 1992) when a word has two or more meanings. Thus, an open question remains on what happens when both meanings of a phrase in an appropriate context are metaphorical. Our explorative study is devoted to that question. We have used an artistic text with a single binary metaphor in it that was easily converted to a literal phrase (see Stimuli and Design section). We have compared eye movements to a metaphorical and a literal phrase. Our predictions were that metaphorical salience and metaphorical ambiguity would attract more attention and would require longer processing than the literal phrase, moreover, this difference would emerge in late eye movement measures such as second pass and total viewing time. Early eye movement measures such as first fixation and first pass are generally considered measures reflecting processing on lexical level so they would remain rather insensitive to the metaphorical or literal differences.
Method Participants A total of 48 native speakers of Russian (14 males; mean age 19.6 [SD ¼ 1.7], age ranged from 17 to 24) voluntary took part in the sessions (24 participants in each session). All of them were university students, studying in bachelor program in philology (40) and in history (8).
Stimuli and design Stimulus material was an artistic short text (51 words) by a Russian writer Daniel Harms (2000, p. 55). All words in the text were used literally except one phrase that utilized a metaphorical transfer. The phrase is ‘‘I’ll enter in you’’ (voydu v tebya) that transfers an action from physical space into a metaphysical one. Along with that, there is also an erotic meaning that makes the phrase metaphorically and semantically rich and also ambiguous (complete text version is presented in Appendix 1). The second text was an absolute copy of the original one with one exception. The metaphorical phrase ‘‘I’ll enter in you’’ was exchanged by ‘‘I’ll enter to you’’ (voydu k tebe) which is an absolutely literal valid phrase that perfectly fits the context. A closer translation to English of the phrases would be ‘‘I’ll come in you’’ versus ‘‘I’ll come to you.’’ Thus, the target phrases were a dualmetaphorical (ambiguous) one and a purely literal one. Note that their superficial grammatical structure and length were identical. Thus, one-factorial between-subject design was applied (Phrase type: metaphorical vs. literal). Area of interest (AOI) was selected to be the whole phrase (voydu v tebya vs. voydu k tebe). Dependent variables were standard eye tracking measures (see Staub & Rayner, 2007): early processing measures (first fixation duration, first pass duration) and late processing measures (second pass duration, number of regressions, total time spent in the AOI, including rereading, and percentage of total time spent in the AOI in comparison with the overall time of stimulus processing).
Procedure The experiment was run using SMI 500 Hz RED eye tracking system. There were two separate parts (conditions) that differed only in sequence of text type presentation.
Novikova et al.
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Participants were asked to read a text on their own pace and then press a button. Then second text was presented, and the participants were asked to read, to compare the two texts, and to find a difference. The answers were registered by the experimenter. The participants did not know in advance that they would be asked to read the second text and to find a difference. This procedure insured inclusion of data of only attentive readers into further analysis. In both reading sessions, no time limit was set. Data of texts presented first were analyzed (in one condition, it was a text with the metaphor, in another—with the literal phrase). One participant was run through one condition only. The texts appeared in black on a light grey background (silver) positioned in two lines with double spacing, font Calibri 26. A five-letter long word approximately subtended 1.7 . The screen resolution was 1,680 1,050. The experiment took about 6 to 10 min.
Results and Discussion Data of five participants (five females, students of philology) that were not able to tell the difference between the two texts were disregarded; remained participants were with mean age 19.7 (SD ¼ 1.7). A one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed on AOI and defined dependent variables (see Table 1 for descriptive statistics).
Early processing measures A one-way ANOVA on first fixation obtained no significant effect (F(1, 41) ¼ .18, p > 0.6, Zp2 ¼ 0.00). However, a significant effect on first pass duration was obtained (F(1, 41) ¼ 6.97, p < 0.05, Zp2 ¼ 0.16) that showed longer time spent in the AOI containing the metaphorical phrase (524 ms) than the literal one (317 ms).
Late processing measures Analysis on the second pass (excluding 16 empty cells) did not show any significance (F(1, 25) ¼ 1.80, p > 0.1, Zp2 ¼ 0.07) as well as on number of regressions to the AOI (F(1, 41) ¼ 0.32, p > 0.5, Zp2 ¼ 0.01). Total fixation time and the percentage of time spent in the AOI were analyzed with exclusion of extremely long fixations (longer than 1,000 ms, 12 cells). ANOVA showed significant effects on both measures. A main effect on total time (F(1, 29) ¼ 10.39, p < 0.01, Zp2 ¼ 0.26) suggested that overall, more time was spent in the AOI with metaphorical phrase (719 ms) than with the literal one (416 ms). In accordance with that result, a main effect on percentage time spent in the AOI (F(1, 29) ¼ 8.16, p < 0.01, Zp2 ¼ 0.22) showed more time spent on the metaphor (5.2%) than on the literal phrase (2.9%) measured in percentage relative to the time spent overall on the stimulus, including fixations on ‘‘empty,’’ text-free zones. The results showed that ambiguous metaphor processing increased not only expected overall time spent on it in comparison with the literal phrase but also the time that is
Table 1. Means and Standard Deviations (in Parentheses) Per Condition and Per Dependent Variable, in ms. Phrase type
First fixation
First pass
Second pass
No. of regressions
Total time
% of total time
Metaphorical Literal
246 (125) 231 (111)
524 (318) 317 (178)
595 (454) 925 (824)
0.7 (0.9) 0.5 (1.0)
719 (227) 416 (284)
5.2 (2.2) 2.9 (2.2)
4
Perception 0(0)
considered an early measure reflecting, probably, near automaticity of processing and lexical access; moreover, the effects on early measures are mostly due to superficial lexical characteristics such as word frequency (Rayner, 1998). To test whether this effect was due to higher frequency of use of the literal phrase comparing to the metaphorical one, a rough estimation of phrase frequency was performed using Google search. With exact phrase excluding mp3 format, the search showed 633,000 entries of metaphorical phrase and 212,000—of the literal phrase. That is, the metaphorical phrase was three times more frequent than the literal so the effect cannot be attributed to the mere frequency influence. That also means that (contrary to a bulk of studies, cf. Staub & Rayner, 2007), this superficial psycholinguistic lexical characteristic was not a powerful predictor of gaze behavior. Thus, contrary to our expectations, the effect on the first pass suggested an early impact of double metaphorical salience and thus, early level of semantic processing of metaphorically ambiguous phrase. In agreement with the results, research suggests that reduction of frequency effect could come from time needed for activation of both meanings of an ambiguous word (Pickering & Frisson, 2001). In our case, it seems that it was not just a reduction of frequency effect but a powerful semantic activation that covered the frequency effect. To conclude, the results suggested the emergence of processing indicators of a binary metaphor during both late and early stages of phrase processing in artistic text reading. While early processing measure suggested semantic activation of both metaphorical meanings, late measures speak rather of more strategic processing, conscious understanding of the phrase, and integrating it into the overall context (Rayner, 1998). Our future research is devoted to the factors that influence processing of metaphorically ambiguous phrases, the timeline of the processing, and its stages. Acknowledgments We thank two anonymous reviewers for their useful comments and suggestions.
Conflict of interest The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by Tomsk State University Academic D. I. Mendeleev Fund Program, Grant No. 8.1.37.2015.
References Cacciari, C., & Tabossi, P. (1988). The comprehension of idioms. Journal of Memory and Language, 27, 668–683. Gibbs, R. W. (1984). Literal meaning and psychological theory. Cognitive Science, 8, 275–304. Giora, R. (2003). On our mind. Salience, context, and figurative language. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Harms, D. (2000). Sobranie sochinenij: v 3 t [A collection of writings: in 3 volumes]. t.2 [v.2] (p. 55). Novaya Aviatsia. SPb: Azbuka [New Aviation. Saint-Petersburg: The ABC].
Novikova et al.
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Pickering, M. J., & Frisson, S. (2001). Processing ambiguous verbs: Evidence from eye movements. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 27, 556. Rayner, K. (1998). Eye movements in reading and information processing: 20 years of research. Psychological bulletin, 124, 372. Sereno, S. C., Pacht, J. M., & Rayner, K. (1992). The effect of meaning frequency on processing lexically ambiguous words: Evidence from eye fixations. Psychological Science, 3, 296–300. Staub, A., & Rayner, K. (2007). Eye movements and on-line comprehension processes. In G. Gaskell (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Psycholinguistics (pp. 327–342). Tynyanov, Y. (1924/2007). Problema stihotvornogo yazyka [The problem of poetic language]. Izd. 4e, M: KomKniga [4th edition, Moscow: KomBook].
Appendix 1 Stimulus material in original Russian and translated into English, the prepositional structure is preserved though it does not sound grammatical in English. Metaphorical/literal phrases are presented in bold. Ooefde, vek noh—qh i qeae, ~ nmpqrvr b qbme milm. Rz rbhdhw{ kel~ b mile. Omqmk ~ bm—dr b dbeo{ h qz rbhdhw{ kel~ b dbeo~t. Omqmk ~ bm—dr b qbm— dmk h qz rgl‘ew{ kel~. Omqmk ~ bm—dr b qea~/bm—dr i qeae h lhiqm, iomke qea~, le rbhdhq h le rgl‘eq kel~. Before coming to you, I will knock on your window. You’ll see me in the window. Then I enter the door and you will see me in the doorway. Then I will enter your house and you will recognize me. Then I will enter (come) in you / I will enter (come) to you and no one but you will see and recognize me.
Metaphorical Salience in Artistic Text Processing: Evidence From Eye Movement
Perception 2015, 0(0) 1–5 ! The Author(s) 2015 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0301006615596692 pec.sagepub.com
E. G. Novikova Tomsk State University, Tomsk, Russia
A. Janyan Tomsk State University, Tomsk, Russia New Bulgarian University, Sofia, Bulgaria
O. V. Tsaregorodtseva Tomsk State University, Tomsk, Russia
Abstract The study aimed to explore processing difference between a literal phrase and a metaphoric one. Unlike artificially created stimuli in most experimental research, an artistic text with an ambiguous binary metaphoric phrase was used. Eye tracking methodology was applied. Results suggested difference between the two types of phrases in both early and late processing measures. Keywords metaphor processing, literality, lexical ambiguity, eye tracking
Introduction Most theories and research on figurative meaning and ambiguity consider literal and figurative meaning in ensemble, for example, the classical example kick the bucket, an idiom that allows both literal and figurative interpretation. Resolution of such an ambiguity may highly depend on context, meaning frequency, conventionality, familiarity, meaning salience (Giora, 2003; see also Tynyanov, 1924/2007, on linguistic theory of salience of some factors on the cost of others). Theories of figurative language processing diverge on a number of issues, and detailed reviews of relevant literature can be found elsewhere. One question that has raised considerable controversy addresses the precedence of literal versus nonliteral processing. On some views, comprehenders bypass literal meaning and access figurative meaning directly (Gibbs, 1984), while on others, temporal priority is given to linguistic analysis but only until enough information is available to prompt recognition of the figurative nature of the string Corresponding author: E. G. Novikova, Tomsk State University, Tomsk, Russia. Email: [email protected]
2
Perception 0(0)
(Cacciari & Tabossi, 1988). Understanding figurative language in this case would involve suppression of the literal meaning that is activated prior to access to the figurative one. On the other hand, except widely discussed and researched the binary literal-figurative division, a figurative–figurative division is hardly ‘‘touched’’ by experimenters. Note, that this ‘‘division’’ is analogous to widely researched lexical ambiguity (e.g., Sereno, Pacht, & Rayner, 1992) when a word has two or more meanings. Thus, an open question remains on what happens when both meanings of a phrase in an appropriate context are metaphorical. Our explorative study is devoted to that question. We have used an artistic text with a single binary metaphor in it that was easily converted to a literal phrase (see Stimuli and Design section). We have compared eye movements to a metaphorical and a literal phrase. Our predictions were that metaphorical salience and metaphorical ambiguity would attract more attention and would require longer processing than the literal phrase, moreover, this difference would emerge in late eye movement measures such as second pass and total viewing time. Early eye movement measures such as first fixation and first pass are generally considered measures reflecting processing on lexical level so they would remain rather insensitive to the metaphorical or literal differences.
Method Participants A total of 48 native speakers of Russian (14 males; mean age 19.6 [SD ¼ 1.7], age ranged from 17 to 24) voluntary took part in the sessions (24 participants in each session). All of them were university students, studying in bachelor program in philology (40) and in history (8).
Stimuli and design Stimulus material was an artistic short text (51 words) by a Russian writer Daniel Harms (2000, p. 55). All words in the text were used literally except one phrase that utilized a metaphorical transfer. The phrase is ‘‘I’ll enter in you’’ (voydu v tebya) that transfers an action from physical space into a metaphysical one. Along with that, there is also an erotic meaning that makes the phrase metaphorically and semantically rich and also ambiguous (complete text version is presented in Appendix 1). The second text was an absolute copy of the original one with one exception. The metaphorical phrase ‘‘I’ll enter in you’’ was exchanged by ‘‘I’ll enter to you’’ (voydu k tebe) which is an absolutely literal valid phrase that perfectly fits the context. A closer translation to English of the phrases would be ‘‘I’ll come in you’’ versus ‘‘I’ll come to you.’’ Thus, the target phrases were a dualmetaphorical (ambiguous) one and a purely literal one. Note that their superficial grammatical structure and length were identical. Thus, one-factorial between-subject design was applied (Phrase type: metaphorical vs. literal). Area of interest (AOI) was selected to be the whole phrase (voydu v tebya vs. voydu k tebe). Dependent variables were standard eye tracking measures (see Staub & Rayner, 2007): early processing measures (first fixation duration, first pass duration) and late processing measures (second pass duration, number of regressions, total time spent in the AOI, including rereading, and percentage of total time spent in the AOI in comparison with the overall time of stimulus processing).
Procedure The experiment was run using SMI 500 Hz RED eye tracking system. There were two separate parts (conditions) that differed only in sequence of text type presentation.
Novikova et al.
3
Participants were asked to read a text on their own pace and then press a button. Then second text was presented, and the participants were asked to read, to compare the two texts, and to find a difference. The answers were registered by the experimenter. The participants did not know in advance that they would be asked to read the second text and to find a difference. This procedure insured inclusion of data of only attentive readers into further analysis. In both reading sessions, no time limit was set. Data of texts presented first were analyzed (in one condition, it was a text with the metaphor, in another—with the literal phrase). One participant was run through one condition only. The texts appeared in black on a light grey background (silver) positioned in two lines with double spacing, font Calibri 26. A five-letter long word approximately subtended 1.7 . The screen resolution was 1,680 1,050. The experiment took about 6 to 10 min.
Results and Discussion Data of five participants (five females, students of philology) that were not able to tell the difference between the two texts were disregarded; remained participants were with mean age 19.7 (SD ¼ 1.7). A one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed on AOI and defined dependent variables (see Table 1 for descriptive statistics).
Early processing measures A one-way ANOVA on first fixation obtained no significant effect (F(1, 41) ¼ .18, p > 0.6, Zp2 ¼ 0.00). However, a significant effect on first pass duration was obtained (F(1, 41) ¼ 6.97, p < 0.05, Zp2 ¼ 0.16) that showed longer time spent in the AOI containing the metaphorical phrase (524 ms) than the literal one (317 ms).
Late processing measures Analysis on the second pass (excluding 16 empty cells) did not show any significance (F(1, 25) ¼ 1.80, p > 0.1, Zp2 ¼ 0.07) as well as on number of regressions to the AOI (F(1, 41) ¼ 0.32, p > 0.5, Zp2 ¼ 0.01). Total fixation time and the percentage of time spent in the AOI were analyzed with exclusion of extremely long fixations (longer than 1,000 ms, 12 cells). ANOVA showed significant effects on both measures. A main effect on total time (F(1, 29) ¼ 10.39, p < 0.01, Zp2 ¼ 0.26) suggested that overall, more time was spent in the AOI with metaphorical phrase (719 ms) than with the literal one (416 ms). In accordance with that result, a main effect on percentage time spent in the AOI (F(1, 29) ¼ 8.16, p < 0.01, Zp2 ¼ 0.22) showed more time spent on the metaphor (5.2%) than on the literal phrase (2.9%) measured in percentage relative to the time spent overall on the stimulus, including fixations on ‘‘empty,’’ text-free zones. The results showed that ambiguous metaphor processing increased not only expected overall time spent on it in comparison with the literal phrase but also the time that is
Table 1. Means and Standard Deviations (in Parentheses) Per Condition and Per Dependent Variable, in ms. Phrase type
First fixation
First pass
Second pass
No. of regressions
Total time
% of total time
Metaphorical Literal
246 (125) 231 (111)
524 (318) 317 (178)
595 (454) 925 (824)
0.7 (0.9) 0.5 (1.0)
719 (227) 416 (284)
5.2 (2.2) 2.9 (2.2)
4
Perception 0(0)
considered an early measure reflecting, probably, near automaticity of processing and lexical access; moreover, the effects on early measures are mostly due to superficial lexical characteristics such as word frequency (Rayner, 1998). To test whether this effect was due to higher frequency of use of the literal phrase comparing to the metaphorical one, a rough estimation of phrase frequency was performed using Google search. With exact phrase excluding mp3 format, the search showed 633,000 entries of metaphorical phrase and 212,000—of the literal phrase. That is, the metaphorical phrase was three times more frequent than the literal so the effect cannot be attributed to the mere frequency influence. That also means that (contrary to a bulk of studies, cf. Staub & Rayner, 2007), this superficial psycholinguistic lexical characteristic was not a powerful predictor of gaze behavior. Thus, contrary to our expectations, the effect on the first pass suggested an early impact of double metaphorical salience and thus, early level of semantic processing of metaphorically ambiguous phrase. In agreement with the results, research suggests that reduction of frequency effect could come from time needed for activation of both meanings of an ambiguous word (Pickering & Frisson, 2001). In our case, it seems that it was not just a reduction of frequency effect but a powerful semantic activation that covered the frequency effect. To conclude, the results suggested the emergence of processing indicators of a binary metaphor during both late and early stages of phrase processing in artistic text reading. While early processing measure suggested semantic activation of both metaphorical meanings, late measures speak rather of more strategic processing, conscious understanding of the phrase, and integrating it into the overall context (Rayner, 1998). Our future research is devoted to the factors that influence processing of metaphorically ambiguous phrases, the timeline of the processing, and its stages. Acknowledgments We thank two anonymous reviewers for their useful comments and suggestions.
Conflict of interest The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by Tomsk State University Academic D. I. Mendeleev Fund Program, Grant No. 8.1.37.2015.
References Cacciari, C., & Tabossi, P. (1988). The comprehension of idioms. Journal of Memory and Language, 27, 668–683. Gibbs, R. W. (1984). Literal meaning and psychological theory. Cognitive Science, 8, 275–304. Giora, R. (2003). On our mind. Salience, context, and figurative language. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Harms, D. (2000). Sobranie sochinenij: v 3 t [A collection of writings: in 3 volumes]. t.2 [v.2] (p. 55). Novaya Aviatsia. SPb: Azbuka [New Aviation. Saint-Petersburg: The ABC].
Novikova et al.
5
Pickering, M. J., & Frisson, S. (2001). Processing ambiguous verbs: Evidence from eye movements. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 27, 556. Rayner, K. (1998). Eye movements in reading and information processing: 20 years of research. Psychological bulletin, 124, 372. Sereno, S. C., Pacht, J. M., & Rayner, K. (1992). The effect of meaning frequency on processing lexically ambiguous words: Evidence from eye fixations. Psychological Science, 3, 296–300. Staub, A., & Rayner, K. (2007). Eye movements and on-line comprehension processes. In G. Gaskell (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Psycholinguistics (pp. 327–342). Tynyanov, Y. (1924/2007). Problema stihotvornogo yazyka [The problem of poetic language]. Izd. 4e, M: KomKniga [4th edition, Moscow: KomBook].
Appendix 1 Stimulus material in original Russian and translated into English, the prepositional structure is preserved though it does not sound grammatical in English. Metaphorical/literal phrases are presented in bold. Ooefde, vek noh—qh i qeae, ~ nmpqrvr b qbme milm. Rz rbhdhw{ kel~ b mile. Omqmk ~ bm—dr b dbeo{ h qz rbhdhw{ kel~ b dbeo~t. Omqmk ~ bm—dr b qbm— dmk h qz rgl‘ew{ kel~. Omqmk ~ bm—dr b qea~/bm—dr i qeae h lhiqm, iomke qea~, le rbhdhq h le rgl‘eq kel~. Before coming to you, I will knock on your window. You’ll see me in the window. Then I enter the door and you will see me in the doorway. Then I will enter your house and you will recognize me. Then I will enter (come) in you / I will enter (come) to you and no one but you will see and recognize me.
