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Journal of Semantics Advance Access published online on June 16, 2007
Journal of Semantics, doi:10.1093/jos/ffm006
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© The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org.

Suppression in Metaphor Interpretation: Differences between Meaning Selection and Meaning Construction

Paula Rubio Fernández

University College London

Correspondence: PAULA RUBIO FERNÁNDEZ, Department of Phonetics and Linguistics University College, London Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, e-mail: paula{at}ling.ucl.ac.uk


  Abstract

Various accounts of metaphor interpretation propose that it involves constructing an ad hoc concept on the basis of the concept encoded by the metaphor vehicle (i.e. the expression used for conveying the metaphor). This paper discusses some of the differences between these theories and investigates their main empirical prediction: that metaphor interpretation involves enhancing properties of the metaphor vehicle that are relevant for interpretation, while suppressing those that are irrelevant. This hypothesis was tested in a cross-modal lexical priming study adapted from early studies on lexical ambiguity. The different patterns of suppression of irrelevant meanings observed in disambiguation studies and in the experiment on metaphor reported here are discussed in terms of differences between meaning selection and meaning construction.

Received for publication 6 August 2006. Revision received 29 January 2007. Accepted for publication 2 February 2007.


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