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Dimensions of metaphor

Article in Journal of Psycholinguistic Research · January 1983

DOI: 10.1007/BF01072712

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Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, Vol. 12, No. l, 1983

Dimensions of Metaphor

Marc Marschark t,3, Albert N. Katz, 2 and Allan Paivio 2

Accepted July 13, 1982

Two rating studies examined several dimensions of metaphorical sentences. A pool oj260
metaphors was constructed, all in the form "(noun phrase) is~are (noun phrase)." In Study 1
all of the items, and in Study 2, 98 of the items were evaluated on ten scales presumed to be
important to the comprehension or interpretation of metaphors: semantic relatedness of the
subject and predicate, comprehensibility, irnageability, imageability of the subject (topic),
imageability of the predicate (vehicle), degree of metaphoricity, metaphor goodness, ease
of interpretation, number of alternative interpretations, and felt familiarity of the meta-
phoric ground. Both experiments revealed the rated dimensions to be highly interrelated,
but some analyses allowed evaluation of alternative predictions based on current theoretical
approaches to metaphor quality and interpretation. The results indicated consistent but
mixed support for the general poisitions under consideration as each appeared to have
strong and weak areas of applicability. The interrelationships among the scales are
discussed, together with implications of the findings for current theories and future
metaphor research.

INTRODUCTION

It is not necessary to search very far into the recent psychological

literature to find a number of disparate models intended to account for the
quality and comprehension of figurative language (see, for example,
recent collections by Honeck & Hoffman, 1980; Ortony, 1979). These
differ in their theoretical perspectives and most often, as a consequence,

l'2,3The research was supported by a University of North Carolina at Greensboro Research

Council grant to Marc Marschark and grants A7040 to A. Katz and A0087 to A. Paivio,
both of the University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario N6A 5C2, Canada, from
the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada. Address cor-
respondence to Marc Marschark, Department of Psychology, University of North
Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, North Carolina 27412.
17

0090-6905[8310100-0017503.00/0 9 1983 Plenum Publishing Corporation

18 Marschark, Katz, and Paivio

in the attributes of metaphor that they offer as pre-eminent (see Ander-

son, 1964; Billow, 1977; Honeck & Hoffman, 1980, for reviews). The
present study evaluated predictions from several of these approaches
through two studies in which novel metaphors were rated on ten
theoretically important dimensions. The dimensions chosen for study
were dictated by several controversial questions in the metaphor litera-
ture. First, what are the characteristics of a sentence that lead to a
nonliteral interpretation? Second, what are the characteristics that make
some metaphors better or more aesthetically pleasing than other meta-
phors? Finally, given various theoretical suggestions that perceptual-like
mechanisms play a special role in metaphoric processing, is there
supportive evidence for these mechanisms and, if so, which of the
theoretical positions are favored?
These questions will be considered in terms of several current ap-
proaches to metaphor processing. It should be noted, however, that the
predictions from most current models of figurative language are rather
vague, and often, results that support one model can also support others.
The present discussion, therefore, is intended to describe only the most
obvious and general implications of the positions presented and only
insofar as they can be applied to the simple "An A is a B" nominal-type
metaphors involved in the following experiments.
Tourangeau and Steinberg (Note 1) delineated three general views of
metaphor: anomaly, comparison (or similarity), and interactionist. The
emphasis in the anomaly view is on the dissimilarity of the semantic
features of topics (subjects) and vehicles (predicates) (e.g., Campbell,
1975). This is dictated by the role played by selection restrictions in recent
linguistic theory (e.g., Katz, 1972). Normally, selection restrictions are
said to be violated when predicates do not fall into the exclusive category
ranges determined by their subjects. The result is that such sentences are
deemed anomalous or, at best, deviant. It is clear, however, that such
violations are the essence of metaphor and that, by this criterion, sentences
can be understood at a non-literal level.
Ziff (1964) provided one solution to this problem. He suggested that
comprehension in such cases is a matter of "grasping the simplest relation
between the utterance and the set of non-deviant utterances" (p. 363, cf.
Katz, 1964). This is accomplished through either the extension or con-
traction of word classes, that is, either loosening or tightening "a prior
supposition that a certain word class is closed to a certain element" (p.
397). The more that the usual restriction rules must be adjusted, the more
difficult should be the link of the deviant utterance to the non-deviant set.
From the perspective of empirical research, this suggests that lower
Dimensions of Metaphor 19

semantic relatedness between a topic and vehicle should produce lower

ratings of ease of interpretation, comprehensibility, and the number of
alternative interpretations available for the sentence while increasing its
degree of metaphoricity (at least up to some extreme point of true
anomaly).
The similarity or comparison view of figurative language is the tradi-
tional approach according to which a metaphor is seen as relating its
subject, or tenor, to something else (in the predicate). Given a metaphor in
the form " A n A is a B," therefore, its goodness, ease of interpretation, and
degree of figurativeness (Johnson & Malgady, 1981; Malgady & Johnson,
1980) all are assumed to be directly related to the number and nature of
attributes that " A " and " B " have in common (i.e., semantic relatedness)
as well as the ease of their transfer (Johnson & Malgady, 1979).
The interactionist view differs somewhat from both of the preceding
positions insofar as it emphasizes both similarity and dissimilarity of the
topic and vehicle as means to highlight analogous or parallel attributes
rather than ones literally shared (e.g., Tourangeau & Sternberg, Note 1;
1981). This position therefore denies the simple positive or negative
relationships between semantic relatedness and other metaphor attributes
implicit in the previous approaches. Rather, it predicts curvilinear re-
lationships between relatedness and measures of metaphor goodness,
degree of metaphoricity, and ease of metaphorical interpretation. Thus,
while anomaly doubtless arises if topic-vehicle dissimilarity (or tension) is
stretched too far, there is considerable pre-anomaly room for metaphorical
interpretation. 4 Johnson (1968, cited in Johnson, 1975), for example,
demonstrated that subjects can produce valid, if "metaphorical" re-
sponses to analogies composed of randomly paired terms (see also, Pollio
& Burns, 1977; Pollio & Smith, Note 2). Such findings present serious
problems for both the similarity and anomaly perspectives which can't
both have their cake and eat it.
Orthogonal to the above views of metaphor are several others re-
flecting a variety of more specific theoretical perspectives. Various of
these emphasize the importance of perception-like (Johnson & Malgady,
1980; Verbrugge, 1977) or imaginal processes (Langer, 1948; Paivio, 1971,
Ch. 13), verbal processes (Koen, 1965), both (Paivio, 1979), or neither
(Honeck, Riechmann, & Hoffman, 1975; Skinner, 1957). Malgady and
4Curvilinear relationships, if obtained would not necessarily be incompatible with the
similarity position. Malgady and Johnson (1980) in fact argue that such a relationship could
occur " a t least in part because of the similarity created between two ordinarily dissimilar
ideas." (p. 242, italics added). This claim, however, does not appear to be a direct
consequence of their still relatively vague model and requires processing assumptions that
they have yet to detail.
20 Marschark, Katz, and Paivio

Johnson (1976; Johnson & Malgady, 1981), for example, proposed that
perceptual mechanisms analogous to those postulated for Gestalt prin-
ciples (cf. Asch, 1958) underlie metaphoric processing. One implication of
this is that since a good metaphor is one that lends itself to a single
interpretation or Gestalt (Malgady & Johnson, 1976, p. 51), metaphor
goodness should be inversely related to the number of alternative interp-
retations available.
The attention given imagery in recent language research also suggests
its importance to psychological studies of metaphor. For the present,
primary interest lay in the relationship of imagery to several interpretability
measures. In addition to overall metaphor imagery, subject and predicate
imageability were evaluated separately in this study. These scales were
included on the basis of a suggestion made by Paivio (1979) that vehicle
imagery should be more important than topic imagery in the interpretation
of metaphors. His proposal was based on the assumption that, "the vehicle
serves as an efficient conceptual peg for metaphor comprehension to the
extent that it promotes retrieval of images and verbal information that
intersects with information aroused by the topic" (cf. Verbrugge &
McCarrell, 1977, p. 168). This suggests that the importance of vehicle
imagery for interpretability may vary with the semantic relatedness of the
corresponding topic.
One further language variable of interest here was felt familiarity. All
of the metaphors in the present study were novel to the extent that they
were either created by the authors or drawn from recent research in the
area presumed to be unknown to our introductory psychology subjects.
Nonetheless, the idea expressed by any particular metaphor, even if novel,
may be relatively familiar since some uses of metaphor are more common
than others. Metaphors likening love or a loved one to flowers or heavenly
bodies ("Juliet is the sun"), for example, are more common than those
likening history to a magnet or a mountain range to headstones. While this
variable has yet to be empirically studied with specific regard to meta-
phors, the importance of the familiarity variable in the verbal learning
tradion argued for its inclusion here.
In summary, the purpose of the present study was to determine and
evaluate possible relationships among several variables currently deemed
important in metaphor research. Since that research involves a variety of
theoretical orientations and empirical traditions, several alternative pre-
dictions were possible. These were not all definitive nor mutually exclusive
but did provide bases for evaluating several current models of metaphor
processing despite the vagueness of their current formulations. The expec-
tations from the anomaly perspective were that greater topic-vehicle re-
latedness should increase a metaphor's ease of interpretation, compre-
Dimensions of Metaphor 21

hensibility, and the number of alternative interpretations of it, but de-

crease its degree of metaphoricity. The similarity perspective, in contrast,
led to the prediction that greater semantic relatedness should increase a
metaphor's figurativeness as well as its goodness and ease of interpre-
tation. Malgady and Johnson's (1976, 1980; Johnson & Malgady, 1981)
perceptual theory of metaphor comprehension similarly predicted that
semantic relatedness should be directly related to ease of metaphoric
interpretation and metaphor goodness. Goodness, however, should be
inversely related to the number of alternative interpretations available for a
metaphor according to that position. From an interactionist perspective,
relationships between the semantic relatedness of a metaphor's topic and
vehicle and its goodness, degree of metaphoricity, and ease of metaphoric
interpretation should be curvilinear (inverted U-shaped). Finally, accord-
ing to Paivio's (1979) imagery position, the imageability of a metaphor's
predicate (or vehicle) should be relatively more important than that of its
subject (or topic) for ease of metaphoric interpretation.

GENERAL METHOD

Metaphor pool. A set of 260 metaphors was constructed. These were

mostly novel metaphors created by the authors, although items from sev-
eral recent figurative-language research papers were also included. All
items were in the form "(noun phrase) is~are (noun phrase)." This pro-
vided consistency with the majority of current empirical work in the area
and avoided possible problems associated with differences between meta-
phors and other figures of speech such as proverbs.
Rating scales. The ten variables assessed in this study were the extent
to which the metaphors described a situation in an apt and pleasing way
(metaphor goodness); the ease or difficulty with which the sentence
aroused mental imagery (imageability); the ease or difficulty of image
arousal to either sentence subjects or predicates (subject imagery, pre-
dicate imagery); the relatedness of subjects and predicates (semantic
relatedness); extent of figurative versus literal interpretation (degree of
metaphoricity); familiarity of the ideas expressed in the sentences (felt
familiarity); comprehensibility; ease of metaphoric interpretation; and the
number of alternative interpretations that could be given. 5
5 For the purposes of this study, subjects were not required to provide interpretations of the
items. In a subsequent study involving a subset of these items (Marschark, Hunt, &
Penland, Note 3), however, subjects did so. The number of different interpretations
supplied by individual subjects spanned the same range as a control group doing the rating
task, and that of the present normative data. The correlation between the normative rated
number of interpretations and those actually produced was r(32) = .58, p < .001.
22 Marschark, Katz, and Paivio

All instructions were modelled after and comparable to instructions

used in previous, similar tasks. Items were referred to as "metaphors"
only where necessary, and otherwise, simply as "'sentences." All instruc-
tions were accompanied by a labelled depiction of the rating scale and
three practice sentences. The practice sentences were the same for all
subjects. Except for number of different alternatives, the variables were
rated on 7-point scales. Each instructional set consisted of a definition of
the construct to be measured, some concrete examples, and detailed
information on how to fill out the rating scale. A complete example of one
instructional set is given in the Appendix. The remainder, as well as the
full metaphor pool and the normative ratings are available from the
authors.

STUDY 1
Procedure and subjects. Each subject received a test booklet con-
taining one of 10 instruction sheets and 319 to-be-rated sentences. These
consisted of the 260 metaphors plus 59 item repetitions intended for use in
reliability checks. Twenty-nine of the latter were randomly distributed
throughout the booklet: the other 30 were first presented in a block
halfway through the list and were repeated at the end of the booklet. Each
of the ten variable scales was rated by a different group of approximately
33 subjects (range 32 to 35). All 334 subjects were University of Western
Ontario undergraduates, participating to satisfy part of a course require-
ment.
Test materials were randomly assigned in all testing sessions. Sub-
jects read the instruction sheet and were self-paced in their ratings of the
items. They were told to rate each item on its own, even if they had
encountered it before (as a reliability item).

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Reliability of Measttres
Reliabilities of each of the 10 variables was assessed both within and
between subjects. Within-subject reliability measures were obtained by
calculating Pearson correlations between the first and second occurrence
of each of the 59 reliability items. These correlations were generally quite
high; at least 75% of the coefficients for each variable were significant at
or beyond the .001 level. The median coefficients and the number of
reliable correlations (out of 59) are shown in Table I. There were no
particular items that were consistently unreliable. Between-subject reli-
ability was assessed by computing Cronbach alpha coefficients for the
Dimensions of Metaphor 23

Table I. Median Within-Subject Reliability Correlations (59 Possible); Cronbach

Alpha Coefficients for 10 Rating Scales (Study 1)
mm

Median No. significant Alpha

Rating scale ra reliability correlations coefficient

Degree of metaphoricity .67 56 .986

Metaphor goodness .72 58 .982
Felt familiarity .79 59 .989
No. of alternatives .81 58 .996
Ease of interpretation .80 58 .990
Comprehensibility .72 57 .989
Semantic relatedness .71 58 .987
Subject imagery .66 57 .969
Predicate imagery .82 57 .986
Overall imagery .76 58 .983

aAll p's < .00l.

ratings o f each of the ten variables. All of the coefficients obtained were
greater than .95 (see Table I) indicating surprisingly high reliability across
o u r normative sample.
M e a n ratings (and standard deviations) were calculated for each of
the 260 metaphors in the pool. In order to eliminate any artifactual
familiarity effects, only the first rating of each of the repeated items was
included in subsequent analyses. Nevertheless, repetition effects were
e x a m i n e d by performing t-tests between the ratings for first and second
o c c u r r e n c e o f each of the 29 randomly distributed reliability items. Out of
the 290 tests (29 for each of ten scales), only 31 (11%) yielded significant
differences at or beyond the .05 level. These were fairly evenly dis-
tributed across all ten variables. Thirteen of the significant effects
reflected higher ratings for first occurrences and 18 reflected higher
ratings for second occurrences of the reliability items. This difference was
not significant by a sign test. Similar tests for the 30 blocked repetitions
could not be obtained because, contrary to instructions, approximately
25% of the subjects failed to rate the second set of these items.

R e l a t i o n s h i p s A m o n g the Ten M e a s u r e s

As a first step in trying to describe the ratings, simple Pearson

p r o d u c t - m o m e n t correlations were computed among the ten scales. The
results o f those analyses, shown in Table II, indicated the measures all to
be highly interrelated. The correlation coefficients ranged from a low of
r = .36 to a high of r = .93, with most falling in the .50 to .80 range. A
24 Marschark, Katz, and Paivio

Table II. Intercorrelations Among the Ten Metaphor Scales (Study 1)"'/~
i i i i

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

l. Imageability (/) - .90 .90 .90 .61 .80 .86 .79 .67 .91
2. Subject I - .86 .86 .62 .79 ,85 .78 .62 .90
3. Predicate I - .87 .54 .72 .81 .76 .61 .85
4. Ease of interpretation - ,65 .80 .87 .82 .65 .93
5. Degree of
metraphoricity - .63 .74 .65 .36 ,67
6. Felt familiarity - .82 ,78 .69 .82
7. Semantic relatedness - ,88 .60 .88
8. Metaphor goodness - .58 .82
9. Number of alternatives - .65
10. Comprehensibility

adJ = 258.
bAll p's < .01.

principle c o m p o n e n t factor analysis performed on these data, not sur-

prisingly, indicated the presence of only one factor with an eigenvalue
greater than unity, accounting for a remarkable 78.8% of the observed
c o m m o n variance. It appears, at least for the ten measures described
here, that either much of a m e t a p h o r ' s meaning and impact can be traced
to a c o m m o n , underlying source, or that the difficulty of processing a
m e t a p h o r i c sentence requires consideration of virtually all of the di-
mensions evaluated here. Although there is no direct evidence as to
w h e t h e r the same would obtain with literal, nonmetaphoric sentences,
there is literature which suggests otherwise (e.g., O'Neill & Paivio, 1978).

Multiple Correlations
In order to clarify the relationships among the dimensions of interest,
ten multiple regression analyses were performed, one for each measure.
In e v e r y case, one of the measures was treated as a criterion variable
while the other variables were entered as predictors. A stepwise procedure
was e m p l o y e d such that the predictors maintained in the final regression
e q u a t i o n were those, and only those, which added significant predict-
ability (~ = .05) even when the influence of all the other variables was
partialled out. The ten regression equations are outlined in Table III.
Reading across the Table are the criterion variable, the multiple R
obtained, the constant (X) added to the equation which maximized
prediction o f the criterial raw score, and the predictor variables which had
a reliable and statistically independent relationship with the criterion.
Dimensions of Metaphor 25

e~

t_

I I

t~

Z ~2~
26 Marschark, Katz, and Paivio

Thus, reading across the first row, one can predict the raw score obtained
on the degree of metaphoricity ratings by the formula, R = .74 (semantic
relatedness score) + .33 (comprehensibility) - .26 (predicate imagery)
- . 14 (no. of alternatives) + 1.41; the multiple R = .76. These results
indicated that sentences were more likely to be considered metaphorical if
they were of low semantic relatedness, difficult to comprehend, had a
predicate (i.e., vehicle) that was easy to image, and was a sentence with
many alternative interpretations. The other nine regression equations can
be interpreted in a similar fashion.

Theoretical Considerations

First, the interrelationships among the present measures suggest a

need for better controls in metaphor research. To date, the majority of
relevant studies have varied one or two of the indices described here
while neglecting other relevant variables. The correlations shown in Table
II, while somewhat high, lie for the most part in the same range as that
observed for item attributes such as word meaningfulness and con-
creteness, which have been shown to be theoretically and empirically
separable (cf. Paivio, 1971). Thus, it should be feasible to perform
metaphor experiments in which the effects of each variable can be
independently assessed.
Despite the high correlations among the ten rating scales, some of the
multiple regression results permitted evaluation of the theoretical pre-
dictions outlined above. Consistent with both the similarity and anomaly
approaches to metaphor, the semantic relatedness of topics and vehicles
was found to be a reliable positive predictor of ease of interpretation. The
similarity prediction of a positive relationship between relatedness and
meatphor goodness was also supported (see Table III). Contrary to that
position, however, degree of metaphoricity was inversely related to
topic-vehicle relatedness. This finding is consistent with the anomaly
position. The further anomaly predictions, that relatedness should be
positively related to comprehensibility and number of alternative interp-
retations, were not supported by the multiple regression analyses (see
Table III).
The interactionist position led to predictions of curvilinear rela-
tionships between semantic relatedness and degree of metaphoricity,
metaphor goodness, and ease of metaphoric interpretation. These were
evaluated through examination of scatterplots of the variables involved
and polynomial regressions. Ease of interpretation appeared to have a
slightly curvilinear relationship with semantic relatedness. Although the
curve did not reach an inflection point, it had a reliable quadratic
Dimensions of Metaphor 27

component, F(1,257) = 6.00. The addition of the quadratic component to

the regression equation, however, accounted for only about .2% of the
variance. Degree of metaphoricity and metaphor goodness were the two
best linear predictors according to the multiple regression, and neither
had a reliable quadratic component, both F's (1,257) < 1.50.
The linear relationship obtained between semantic relatedness and
metaphor goodness replicated that obtained by Johnson and Malgady
(1979) and was consistent with the prediction from their perceptual model
of metaphor interpretation. That model also entails, however, that a good
metaphor is one that has only a single interpretation; an inverse relation-
ship therefore would be predicted between a metaphor's goodness and the
number of alternative interpretation available for it. This prediction was
contradicted by the relatively high, positive correlation obtained
(r = .58). Further, the best-fitting regression line had a slope of 1.30 and
an x-intercept (alternatives) of 1.45. Contrary to the Johnson and Malgady
position, the " b e s t " metaphors were those with about two interpre-
tations. The mean rated goodness at one interpretation was about 2.7,
whereas at two interpretations it was about 4.6 on our seven-point scale.
The data also allowed evaluation of Paivio's (1979) prediction that
predicate imageability should be relatively more important for a meta-
phor's interpretation than the imageability of its subject. Although there
was little difference between the simple correlations of ease of interpre-
tation with subject and predicate imageability (r's = .86 and .87, respec-
tively), partialling out the effects of all other variables in the multiple
correlations left predicate imagery as the only reliable imageability
predictor.
In addition to the specific predictions tested above, two somewhat
more speculative findings deserve comment. First there is an apparent
paradox in the data when one compares the regression equations (Table
III) obtained for degree of metaphoricity and metaphor goodness. High
semantic relatedness was related to metaphor goodness here, while low
relatedness was related to the judgment of a sentence as metaphoric. It is
as if people used the degree of semantic relatedness to help them to decide
whether a sentence was literal or not, with low relatedness implying
metaphoricity. Once the sentence was perceived as being metaphoric,
however, semantic relatedness was employed or viewed differently, with
high relatedness then implying a good metaphor. It also should be noted
that semantic relatedness was the greatest contributor to both criterion
variables, and the different roles it plays obviously demand further
investigation. The second finding involves the comparison of compre-
hensibility and interpretability ratings. The high simple relationship
(r = .93) indicates that people do similar things when asked to interpret
28 Marschark, Katz, and Paivio

" m e t a p h o r s " and comprehend "sentences." Nonetheless the subtle

differences which do emerge suggest that the imposition of a metaphor
orientation leads to an emphasis on some different aspects in the rating
task than does a sentence orientation. Comparing the predicators of
comprehensibility and interpretability, a sentence orientation led par-
ticipants to focus on the literalness, concreteness, and familiarity of the
sentence; whereas a metaphor orientation led to a focus on the relation-
ship of the subject and predicate, and predicate concreteness. Obviously
the effects of simple instructional differences on how one processes
linguistic input also deserve further investigation.

STUDY 2

The results of Study 1 indicated high consistency both within and

between subjects in the metaphor rating task. They also provided the
basis for evaluating several theoretical positions currently of interest in
empirical metaphor research, yielding mixed support for all three of the
general approaches considered. Perhaps most importantly, however, the
use of ten different rating scales provided information concerning the
interrelationships among variables typically confounded in investigations
of metaphor attributes and interpretation. If the high correlations ob-
tained among those variables seem to present interpretation difficulties
for a rating study, their importance for manipulative research cannot be
overestimated. Given the potential implications of these findings and the
mixed support for the similarity, anomaly, and interactionist positions, a
replication study was conducted.
Study 2 involved subjects from a different source than those in Study
1 and a subset of the original stimulus pool. There were two restrictions
on the quasi-random selection of stimulus items. First, any metaphors
that involved auditory reference (e.g., "Silence is an apron") were
eliminated to facilitate further use of the materials with deaf subjects.
Second, stimuli for this experiment were chosen from among those with
lower between-subject variability. This constraint was an attempt to
eliminate potential, artifactual item variance that may have been created
by the non-systematic manner of metaphor construction. No attempts
were made, however, to control the distributions of items within or across
the ten scales. The result was a pool of 98 metaphors that appeared to be a
representative subset of the original pool.
Dimensions of Metaphor 29

Table IV. Mean Scale Ratings (and Standard Deviations) for 260-Item Stimulus
Pool and the 98-Item Subset of Study 2, as Obtained in Study 1, and New Mean
Ratings Obtained for 98-|terns in Study 2
m

Study 1 Study 2

260 Items 98 Items 98 Items

1. Degree of metaphoricity 3.13 (.61) 3.25 (.66) 3.41 (.79)

2. Metaphor goodness 3.88 (.81) 4.13 (.94) 4.30 (1.04)
3. Semantic relatedness 3.82 (1.01) 4.15 (1.17) 3.94 (1.28)
4. Number of alternatives 1.87 (.36) 1.94 (.40) 1.81 (.26)
5. Subject 1 4.04 (.93) 4.35 (1.03) 4.66 (1.24)
6. Predicate I 4.08 (.94) 4.28 (1.06) 4.47 (1.03)
7. Imageability (/) 4.02 (1.05) 4.26 (t.23) 4.56 (1.25)
8. Felt familiarity 3.52 (1.08) 3.78 (l.16) 3.94 (1.20)
9. Ease of interpretation 5.13 (.94) 5.33 (1.08) 5.08 (1.28)
10. Comprehensibility 5.13 (.92) 5.35 (1.03) 4.97 (1.04)
m

Method

Stimuli and procedure. Mean scale ratings for the 98-item subset
used in Study 2 were calculated from the data of Study 1. These are
p r e s e n t e d in Table IV where it can be seen that both the means and
standard deviations for all of the scales were somewhat higher than those
o f the complete 260-item pool. The differences in the means were all
relatively small (between .07 and .35), however, and appeared unlikely to
affect the results.
The p r o c e d u r e was identical to that of Study 1. The 98 metaphors
were randomly ordered on four pages of a test booklet and page order was
r a n d o m across both subjects and rating scales. Each booklet contained a
single instruction page; instructions were identical to those used in
S t u d y 1.
Subjects. The subjects were all undergraduate students at the Uni-
veristy of N o r t h Carolina at Greensboro, participating to satisfy part of a
c o u r s e requirement. Ratings on each of the ten scales were obtained from
a different group of approximately 30 subjects. A total of 303 subjects
w e r e tested in groups of 3 to 34.
30 Marschark, Katz, and Paivio

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Reliability of Measures

Reliabilities of ratings for the ten variables were assessed between

subjects by Cronbach alpha coefficients for each. All of the coefficients
obtained were greater than .87; all but one were greater than .90 (see
Table V). Mean ratings (and standard deviations) were calculated for each
of the 98 metaphors, and consistency with the ratings of Study 1 was
assessed by computing Pearson correlation coefficients between the two
sets of means. These were all highly reliable (see Table V).

Relationships Among the Ten Rating Scales

The simple correlations among the 10 measures are shown in Table

VI. These ranged from .01 to .94; all but three of the correlations were
reliable at the .01 level. The only large deviations from Study 1 were
lower correlations between the rated number of alternative interpre-
tations for the metaphors and the other scales (mean r's = .62 and .24 for
Studies 1 and 2, respectively). The reasons for this are not immediately
apparent, but it was probably just as likely due to differences between the
samples of subjects involved as the samples of stimuli. Although the
effects of this aberration on the results are difficult to determine, the
outcome of the multiple regression analyses (where the predictors were
isolated) suggested that the simple correlations probably underestimated
the comparability of the two studies.
A principle component factor analysis performed on the data from
Study 2 indicated two factors with eigenvalues greater than unity. The
first factor (eigenvalue 7.71) contained all of the scales; number of
alternative interpretations had a factor loading of .297, and all others had
loadings greater than .745. This factor accounted for 77.1% of the
variance, comparable to the 78.8% accounted for by the single factor
obtained in Study 1. The only variables to load on the second factor
(eigenvalue 1.06) were number of interpretations (factor loading .928) and
degree of metaphoricity (-.350), the two variables with the lowest factor
loadings in Study 1. This factor accounted for 10.6% of the variance and
further evidence the fact that ratings of the number of alternative
interpretations available for the metaphors provided the only real dif-
ference between the two studies. Given the apparent comparability of the
stimuli in the two studies (see Table IV), however, this finding seems
likely to have arisen as a consequence of differences between the
Dimensions of Metaphor 31

Table V. Reliability Measures, Study 2: Cronbach Alpha Coefficients for 10 Rating

Scales and Pearson Correlation Coefficients for Ratings Obtained in Studies 1 and
2 (98-Item Subset)
n

Pearson correlation
Alpha coefficient between
coefficient Studies 1 and 2a

Degree of metaphoricity .878 ,84

Metaphor goodness .911 .86
Semantic relatedness .959 .92
No. of alternative interpretations .968 .57
Subject (topic) imagery .929 .83
Predicate (vehicle) imagery .942 .86
Overall imagery ~923 .89
Felt familiarity .977 .91
Ease of interpretation .952 .90
Comprehensibility .924 .91

adf = 96, all p's < .001.

Table VI. Intercorrelations Among the Ten Metaphor Scales (Study 2)~`'t~

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

1. Imagability(/) - .89 .93 .94 .67 .88 .91 .85 .24 .93
2. Subject I - .84 .84 .52 .75 .78 .68 .17" .82
3. Predicatel - .91 .61 .89 ,86 .86 .32 .89
4. Easeofinterpretation - .71 .90 .93 .89 .25 .95
5. Degreeofmetaphoricity - .69 .82 .62 .01"* .69
6. Felt familiarity - .87 .83 .41 .91
7. Semantic relatedness - .86 .15" .91
8. Metaphor goodness - .34 .87
9. Number of alternatives - .23
10. Comprehensibility

adf = 96.
bAllp's -< ,01 except: *p < .07 (2); **N.S. (1).

C a n a d i a n s t u d e n t s o f S t u d y 1 a n d the A m e r i c a n (mostly s o u t h e r n )
s t u d e n t s o f S t u d y 2. It is u n c l e a r , h o w e v e r , w h y such differences w o u l d
h a v e a f f e c t e d o n l y o n e o f the rating scales.

Multiple Correlations
T h e s a m e s t e p w i s e p r o c e d u r e a n d criteria e m p l o y e d in S t u d y 1 were
u s e d h e r e . T h e t e n r e g r e s s i o n e q u a t i o n s that r e s u l t e d are p r e s e n t e d in
32 Marschark, Katz, and Paivio

Table VI. Those variables that were also significant predicators in the first
study are underlined to indicate their interpretative importance.
Despite restrictions in selecting 98 items for the second experiment
from the original 260, the overlap between the two studies was impres-
sive. Fully 27 of the 39 significant predicators found in the multiple
regressions of Study 1 also emerged in Study 2. A 2 x 2 chi-square
analysis (lst study predictor/no predictor vs 2nd study predictor/no
predictor), in which the frequency data were the number of correlations
that fell into each of the 4 cells, confirmed the dependence of the two
studies X2 = 6.52, p < .025. Moreover of the 12 failures, i.e., predictors
found in Study 1 but not significant in Study 2, 6 were marginally
significant.

Theoretical Considerations

As in Study 1, some of the present results were pertinent to

alternative theoretical positions concerning metaphor quality and interp-
retation. The findings regarding the similarity position replicated those of
the previous experiment, as the same two (of three) predictions were
supported. Semantic relatedness of topic and vehicle was a positive,
reliable predictor of metaphor goodness and ease of interpretation, but
not degree of metaphoricity. Two of the four predictors from the anomaly
position were also supported, as they had been in Study 1. Semantic
relatedness was a reliable, positive predictor of ease of interpretation, and
a negative predictor of degree of metaphoricity. Predictions concerning
comprehensibility and number of alternatives, as in Study 1, were not
supported.
The interactionist predictions of curvilinear relationships between
semantic relatedness and measures of goodness, degree of metaphoricity,
and ease of interpretation were evaluated again using scatter plots and
polynomial regressions. The findings were almost exactly the same as
those obtained before. Ease of interpretation had a very slight curvilinear
component in its relationship with semantic relatedness. Although the
contribution of the quadratic term to the regression equation was sig-
nificant, F(1, 95) = 6.74 it accounted for only .4% additional variance
beyond the 94% contributed by the linear components.
The findings with regard to Johnson and Malgady's (1981) perceptual
theory of metaphor replicated those of Study 1: metaphor goodness was
directly related to semantic relatedness, but not inversely related to the
number of alternative interpretations as had been predicted. The "best"
Dimensions of Metaphor 33

~t~.1~

I I"

O
L~
I"

II Iii
34 Marschark, Katz, and Paivio

metaphors appeared to be those with an average of about 1.8 interp-

retations. Finally, Paivio's (1979) prediction of a greater role for predicate
imagery than subject imagery in metaphor interpretation was supported
by the simple correlations, r's = .91 and .84, respectively. This difference
was relatively small, however, and predicate imagery was no longer a
reliable predictor of interpretability in the multiple correlation analysis. It
may be that the exclusion of metaphors with auditory imagery from this
experiment created a bias in the stimulus pool.
Finally, the two supplementary results obtained earlier emerged in
this second study. First, high semantic relatedness was related to
judgments of metaphor goodness whereas low relatedness was related to
judgment of a sentence as metaphorical. Second, it again appeared that a
metaphor orientation (relevant for the ease of interpretation) led to a
focus on the relationship between subject and topic whereas the sen-
tential orientation of this measure (relevant for comprehensibility) led to a
focus on the concreteness and familiarity of the sentence.

GENERAL DISCUSSION

Three general questions, outlined in the introduction, guided this

research. The first two concerned the characteristics which lead to a
sentence being interpreted as a metaphor, and those which underlie
metaphoric goodness. With respect to the first question, it appears that
sentences are more likely to be seen as metaphoric as their subjects and
predicates become less similar in meaning. At the same time the sentence
must be such that it suggests alternative interpretations. A metaphor is
thus a sentene that does not readily lead to interpretation yet nonetheless
" p r o m i s e s " that one might be available. The comparison between the
ease of interpretation and the comprehensibility ratings also suggested
that orienting people to interpret sentences as metaphors engenders a
strategy in which subject-predicate relationships are sought, and perhaps
predicate imagery elicited. Within this "metaphor mode," those sen-
tences that are easier to interpret and in which the subject (topic) and
predicate (vehicle) are more closely related are seen as more apt and
pleasing (i.e., better) metaphors.
These findings have relevance for the different classes of models
postulated for metaphor processing. Consider first the role assumed to be
played by semantic relatedness. According to many linguistic models
(e.g., J. J. Katz, 1972) metaphors are linguistically anomalous and hence,
should be difficult to interpret at best (but see Glucksberg, Gildea, &
Bookin, 1982). Since acceptable sentences are assumed to depend upon a
Dimensions of Metaphor 35

correspondence between subject and object selection restrictions, that

correspondence should be related to indices relevant to the interpret-
ability of the sentence. This suggests that semantic relatedness should be
positively related to measures of sentential interpretability but negatively
related to measures of figurativeness. The multiple regression data,
however, provided little support for this position. Semantic relatedness
was positively related to ease of interpretation only in Study 2, and
contrary to predictions was not a reliable predictor of comprehensibility
(although the linear, positive correlation between them was around .90),
nor of the number of alternative interpretations of a metaphor. Further,
the relationship between semantic relatedness and degree of meta-
phoricity was strongly positive in both studies.
The latter finding was consistent with comparison (or similarity)
models of metaphor interpretation. Johnson and Malgady's (1979) model
may be considered prototypical of these approaches in the assumption
that "the meaning of a word can be thought of as a set or vector of
potential underlying elements" (p. 251). According to this approach,
linguistic context establishes some set of features as the effective meaning
of the word in a particular instance. The combination of words in a
metaphor (or any other sentence, for that matter) then, results in
summation of the feature sets or vectors of the component parts. The
"meaning" and presumably the interpretation of the metaphor, in turn,
consists in those features shared by the topic and vehicle and thus made
salient by the combination. Consistent with this formulation, Johnson and
Malgady found both metaphor goodness and ease of interpretation to be
positively related to measures of topic and vehicle (noun) relatedness in
28 literary metaphors. The present data, based on intuitively constructed
metaphors, also revealed this pattern. (Comprehensibility, and not ease of
interpretation, was a significant predictor in Study 1, but this was
reversed in Study 2). This finding stands in contrast to the position taken
by Campbell (1975), who argued that it is the dissimilarity of topic and
vehicle that makes metaphors distinctive. According to that position, less
topic and vehicle overlap should lead to higher ratings of metaphor
goodness.
In summary, the present data indicate that high semantic relatedness
is positively associated with the perception of a sentence as being easy to
image, understandable, and a good metaphor, at least for sentences
constructed with metaphoric relationships in mind. It may be, however,
that the relationship between semantic relatedness and metaphoric prop-
erties like figurativeness, are curvilinear rather than linear when con-
sidered across the complete range of possible sentences (Johnson &
36 Marschark, Katz, and Paivio

Malgady, 1980). If semantic relatedness is too high, as in "A canary is a

bird," a sentence may be perceived as being nonfigurative; if too low, as
in " A turtle is a dance," a sentence may be considered anomalous.
Metaphors appear to fall somewhere in between these extremes.
Tourangeau and Sternberg (Note 1) made a somewhat similar suggestion
in assuming metaphor goodness to be determined by distances between
subject and predicate concepts both between and within semantic do-
mains. Unfortunately, the present stimulus set was too restricted to allow
evaluation of this possibility insofar as both anomalous and literal
sentences were avoided (cf. Johnson & Malgady, 1979).
The final question guiding this research concerned the role of per-
ceptual-like processes in metaphor processing. Two general models were
discerned. One was Malgady and Johnson's (1976)hypothesis that
perceptual mechanisms, similar to those proposed by Asch (1958) for
Gestalt principles, underlie the processing of metaphors. The second
involved the role of imaginal processes.
Malgady and Johnson's perceptual position entails metaphor good-
ness being closely related to the semantic relatedness of topics and
vehicles, and this was clearly the case in both of these experiments. At
the same time, however, the Gestalt position suggests that goodness
would also be a function of the ease with which a metaphor can be
assigned a single, wholistic interpretation (Malgady & Johnson, 1976).
The present data did not support this prediction, as increasing numbers of
interpretations led to better metaphor ratings. The best metaphors
appeared to be those with an average of almost two interpretations (cf.
Marschark et al., Note 3).
Another implication of the Malgady and Johnson position is that
figurativeness should be a function of the number of alternative interp-
retations possible for the metaphor. As would be predicted, greater
figurativeness was positively related to the number of perceived alterna-
tive interpretations in both of the present experiments. Greater figura-
tiveness also was related, however, to the imageability of metaphoric
vehicles, and the beta weights associated with the imagery variable
suggested that it was the more important correlate of the two. While
metaphoric imagery might also implicate perceptual-like processing, it
does not refer necessarily to the same mechanism as entailed by "per-
ceptual richness." Empirical work on disentangling the two contributors
is clearly needed.
The role of imagery in metaphor processing is also an important issue
in its own right. The importance of imaginal processes in metaphor
comprehension has been considered by a number of authors (e.g.,
Dimensions of Metaphor 37

Langer, 1948; Miller, 1979; Paivio, 1971, Ch. 13, 1979; Verbrugge, 1977).
Paivio (1979) discussed the contributions of both imagery and verbal
processes (as separate but interconnected systems) in metaphor com-
prehension. He emphasized the organizational characteristics of the
imagery system in providing a large storehouse of potentially relevant,
detail-rich information. At the same time, verbal information increases
the probability of finding a connection between the topic and vehicle of
the metaphor and keeps the search process "on track." Paivio further
suggested that the vehicle is the more potent term of a metaphor insofar as
it is its properties, by definition, that are transferred to the topic. He
therefore concluded that imagery of the vehicle should be crucial to
imaginal interpretation of a metaphor because a concrete term provides
for more rapid access to the information-rich images.
The data obtained in Study 1 supported Paivio's analysis inasmuch as
sentences rated high in metaphoricity and comprehensibility tended to
have predicates (vehicles) that were easy to image (see Table II). In Study
2, the simple correlational data supported this view, although the multiple
correlation data on the restricted stimulus subset did not. These rela-
tionships are consistent with imagery playing some role in metaphor
comprehension and at the least contradict the claim of Reichmann and
Coste (1980) that it is a "tangential phenomenon."
While imaginal processes are doubtless important in the com-
prehension of those metaphors that involve comparisons of perceptual
attributes, we would not wish to argue that visual imagery is necessary for
the interpretation of all metaphors. In particular, while research in related
areas has indicated imagery to aid in the processing of some abstract
attributes, like the pleasantness of an object (Paivio & Marschark, 1980),
whether or not it is important for the comprehension of abstract meta-
phors remains an empirical question (cf. Marschark & Paivio, 1977).
Further, the effects of imagery in sense modalities other than vision have
not really been addressed. The elimination of auditory-related metaphors
in the second experiment, however, appears to have had some effect on
the resulting pool, suggesting the need for further investigations in this
regard.
Several additional points should be mentioned in conclusion. First,
while extensive by curreht standards in the area in terms of the number of
metaphors employed and participants tested, the present data are based
only on intuitively-generated metaphors. The relationships observed
among the ten measures employed in the present study may not be the
same as those found to be relevant to metaphors generated in other ways
(e.g., Johnson, 1975; Reyna, Note 4). The similarity of the relationships
38 Marschark, Katz, and Paivio

observed here with the literary and randomly-generated metaphors

employed by Johnson and Malgady (1980) is impressive, however, and
augurs well with the generality of the present findings. Second, the
present results derived from metaphors of only one form and may not
generalize to other figurative language, such as proverbs, despite the
claim by some (Honeck & Hoffman, 1980) that these are amenable to the
same empirical and theoretical analysis. Finally, the high interrelations of
the present indicies and the resultant emergence of a single statistical
factor accounting for almost 80% of the variance, should again be
emphasized. While we hesitate to label this "monster" factor (in the
sense of Frankenstein's monster being composed of many different parts
but not easily named on the basis of any subset of them), similar results
have been obtained by other investigators (e.g., Johnson & Malgady,
1979) and appear to be the nature of the beast. Rather than viewing this
with alarm, researchers should search for the reasons underlying the
commonality and ensure that the stimuli used in future metaphor studies
are carefully chosen.

REFERENCE NOTES

1. Tourangeau, R., & Sternberg, R. J. Understanding and appreciating metaphors.

Unpulished mimeo (Technical Report No. 11), June 1978.
2. Pollio, H., & Smith, M. Sense and nonsense in thinking about anomaly and metaphor.
Unpublished mimeo, 1978.
3. Marschark, M., Hunt, R., & Penland, M. On memory for metaphor. Manuscript in
preparation, 1982.
4. Reyna, V. F. Metaphor comprehension and word menaing. Paper presented at the
Psychonomic Society Annual Meeting, Phoenix, Arizona, 1979.

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Campbell, P. Metaphor and linguistic theory. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 1975, 61, 1-12.
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Dimensions of Metaphor 39

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APPENDIX

Example of Complete Instructional Set

Metaphor goodness. This study is concerned with your understanding

of metaphors. A metaphor is a type of sentence in which one object is
compared to another in a non-literal way. For example, consider the
following non-metaphor sentence:

"An airplane is a vehicle."

This sentence related airplanes and vehicles. It is not a metaphor because
the relationship is one that is literal since an airplane is a type of vehicle.
Contrast the earlier sentence with this one:

" A n airplane is a migrating bird."

In this case an airplane is related to a bird. It is a metaphor because
literally speaking an airplane is not a bird. Nonetheless, you probably can
interpret and get the point of this sentence: an airplane is like a bird
because it can fly, because of its shape, perhaps because both are
beautiful, and so on. In this experiment you will be presented with a set of
sentences, all of which are metaphors. We are interested in determining
how good you think the metaphor is. Some metaphors describe a situation
or make a comparison in an extremely apt and pleasing way. Other
metaphors are poor descriptions or figures of speech. In this task we are
interested in how good you think each of the sentences are. Those
sentences which you think are good metaphors should be given a high
rating whereas those which you believe are poor metaphors should be
given a low rating.

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