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Rocket surgery: On the use and comprehension of mixed metaphors| old_uid | 13096 |
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| title | Rocket surgery: On the use and comprehension of mixed metaphors |
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| start_date | 2013/11/29 |
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| schedule | 14h |
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| online | no |
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| summary | The term mixed metaphor commonly refers to blended uses of idioms, as for instance 'We're just scratching the tip of the iceberg'. More specifically however, the term denotes figurative expressions that combine lexical items from semantically incongruous domains, such as 'an oasis of peace and quiet in a sea of hectic activity'. Despite the incongruity of the items oasis and sea (an oasis is found in the desert, not in the sea) the latter expression arguably still has a meaningful interpretation, so that a mere characterization of mixed metaphors as 'deficient' or 'contaminated' language use does not do justice to the phenomenon.
But how then are mixed metaphors understood? Different theories of metaphor, in particular Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff & Johnson 1980) and Blending Theory (Fauconnier & Turner 2004), make different predictions with regard to the use and comprehension of expressions with lexis from more than one semantic domain. Mixed metaphors are therefore a useful test case for the empirical evaluation of these theories.
In a two-tiered empirical study that uses quantitative corpus data as well as experimental evidence, it will be argued that mixed metaphors selectively combine aspects of two or more semantically conflicting source domains into a single figurative meaning. Conflicting aspects, on the other hand, are suppressed. The evidence is thus more compatible with Blending Theory than it is with Conceptual Metaphor Theory. |
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| responsibles | Carlier |
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