Nominal Metaphor Aptness: Semantic Features and Degree of Matching between Topic and Vehicle

Degree of aptness of the nominal metaphor X is a Y or the extent to which the metaphorical statement expresses its specific non-literal meaning and the nature of relationship between aptness and semantic features of topic (X) and vehicle (Y) is the subject that is addressed in this study. Conducting an experiment in which 35 undergraduate students judged degree of relevancy of 10 semantic features of topic and vehicle of nominal metaphors, the researchers of this studysought to find how aptness of a metaphor is related to various meaning aspects of topic and vehicle. The instrument was a test including 20 nominal metaphors, each one followed by 10 semantic features of topic and vehicle. The participants were required to judge the degree ofrelevancy of each feature on the basis of a Likert scale ranging from 0 (irrelevant) to 3 (completely relevant). The obtained results suggested that several aspects of meaning might simultaneously be in operation throughout metaphor comprehension. However, these aspects arenot at the same level; that is, one meaning aspect plays the dominant role, while others play a secondary role. Taking Glucksberg’s class-inclusion view of metaphor comprehension and Gentner’s structure-mapping view and based on the results obtained in the experiment, thisarticle presents a model according to which degree of aptness of a nominal metaphor is determined by degree of relevancy of a specific meaning aspect of vehicle. When a particular aspect is highly-relevant in terms of metaphorical meaning, it functions as a base which creates a high degree of matching between topic and vehicle of a nominal metaphor. Therefore, level of matching or the extent to which the topic is properly described by the vehicle is mainly based on a single aspect of meaning rather than several aspects of meaning.

کلیدواژه ها:

Nominal metaphor ، Topic ، Vehicle ، Aptness ، Class-inclusion