Classification Schemes

As can be seen from the above sections, there are many different ways of viewing the nature of a metaphor, but there is one finding which there seems to be consistent agreement about. The conventionality of the metaphor will have an effect on the comprehension process and

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consequently on the cognitive effort invested in the process. But as is the case for metaphor definition, there seems to be little consistency in metaphor classification.

In his work on translation, Newmark presented perhaps the most extensive classification scheme for metaphors with five categories: dead, cliché, stock, recent, and original (Newmark 1981: 85). Dead metaphors are metaphors where the comprehender is “hardly conscious of the image”. Newmark argued that the vehicles of dead metaphors are often taken from terminology from “space and time, the main part of the body, general ecological features and the main human activities” (Newmark 1988: 106). Newmark’s examples of dead metaphors included “field, line, top, bottom [...] fall, rise”, as e.g. in ‘the field of human knowledge’. The category of cliché metaphor was defined as a category of metaphors which are used “emotively” “as a substitute for clear thought” (Newmark 1988: 107). Newmark illustrated this category with the examples of e.g., backwater and break through. The third category was termed stock or standard

metaphors. Newmark acknowledged that the distinction between cliché and stock metaphors is quite vague and may be context dependent. A stock metaphor is an “established” metaphor which can be efficient when used informally. It can have an emotional value similar to a cliché metaphor but is “not deadened by overuse” (He exemplified this category with keep the pot

boiling, wooden face and a drain on resources (Newmark 1988: 108ff.)). The fourth category

was recent metaphors which are new expressions which have quickly become popularised in the language such as e.g., head-hunting (Newmark 1988: 112). The final category of original metaphors were created or quoted by the sender, and the few examples provided by Newmark seemed to indicate that many of this type are quite elaborate or even ‘bizarre’ (p. 112) such as

and on the second day, the squealing (sic) of brakes was loud in the land ... The National Coal Board had gone about as far as it could go (Newmark 1988: 113). How a metaphor can be

original if quoted is not obvious, but it would seem to depend on its lack of widespread use.

Newmark’s classification scheme is finely granulated, but for the purpose of empirical research, especially considering the apparent difficulty of documenting processing differences, two or three metaphor categories will be sufficient as this will help avoid any overlap in classifying the investigated metaphors, i.e., that a specific metaphor could be categorised in more than one category.

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Deignan (2005) classified linguistic metaphors according to their frequency in a corpus. Her model is partly based on Lakoff’s discussion of dead metaphors (Lakoff 1987) and Goatly’s classification scheme (1997) with metaphors from naturally occurring texts, which she then combined with her corpus methodology. Her model can be seen below.

Table 1: Identification and classification of metaphorically-motivated linguistic expressions (Deignan 2005: 47)

Types of metaphorically- motivated linguistic expressions

Identification Example

1. Innovative metaphors Fewer than one use per thousand corpus citations of word, or all citations from a single source.

He held five icicles in each hand. (Larkin, cited in Goatly 1997:34)

2. Conventional metaphors Not innovative or historical by corpus criteria (see 1 and 4). Metaphorical sense dependent on core senses by corpus linguistic and/or semantic criteria.

The wind was whispering through the trees. (Allbritton 1995:35)

grasp (Lakoff 1987b)

(spending) cut (Goatly 1997) 3. Dead metaphors Not innovative or historical by

corpus criteria (see 1 and 4). Metaphorical sense not dependent on a core sense by either corpus linguistic or semantic criteria

deep (of colour)

crane (machine for moving

heavy objects) (Goatly 1997)

4. Historical metaphors The former literal sense is either not represented in

comprehend, pedigree, pupil

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corpus or is so different in meaning as to be homonymic for current speakers.

Although Deignan’s methodology may be different, her classification categories are not drastically different from those of other researchers. An important aspect of Deignan’s work is the observation that methodologies in metaphor research need not be entirely intuitive and can in fact be based on objective empirical criteria rather than subjective introspections (Deignan 2005: 118). However, because of the lack of sharply delineated borders between the different metaphor categories, it can be somewhat complex to work with a specific category of metaphors unless one is able to incorporate corpus-based research as Deignan did.

However, the concept of using corpora to investigate the frequency of metaphorical expressions occurring in natural text was applied indirectly in this thesis as the effects of word frequency and word-in-context probabilities were included in the analyses of both the eye-tracking and key-logging data sets. The values were from the British National Corpus (BNC) and especially the word-in-context probability or trigram probability could be compared with Deignan’s corpora research as the trigram probability provides a value for the probability of a specific word occurring together with the words to the immediate left and right of the word. In other words, if there are very few occurrences of a word and its two neighbours occurring together in the BNC, the trigram probability value will be correspondingly low. Although this cannot be compared to actual corpus research such as the work done by Deignan, the unigram and trigram independent variables provide some of the same benefits as corpus research targeted specifically at classifying metaphors.