The effects of the listener’s involvement on understanding metaphors about emotion

Abstract

The purposes of this study were to examine the effect of a listener’s involvement on a speaker’s metaphor production and on a third person’s metaphor appraisal of emotional and politeness intensity. In Study 1, participants (N＝119) were assigned to both an involved condition (a speaker is supposed to explain his/her emotion to a listener who aroused the speaker’s emotion) and a not-involved condition, and asked to make metaphors that expressed his/her worst lecture and cooking experiences. In Study 2, participants (N＝24) were asked to rate the negative emotional intensity of metaphors which were collected in Study 1 as readers of those metaphors. In Study 3, participants (N＝167) were asked to rate the harshness and indirectness of the metaphors, again as readers of those metaphors. Results showed that there were metaphors specific to each of the involved and not-involved conditions. In addition, metaphors produced in the involved condition were rated higher in harshness and negative emotional intensity, and lower in indirectness of expression, compared to metaphors created in the not-involved condition.