Abstract
The purpose of this study was to search for the factors that contributed to the understanding of the emotions expressed by figurative language. In the preliminary study, 74 similes that express joy, sadness, and anger were selected. Eighty-four subjects rated 74 similes on SD scales. Factor analysis was conducted on the data. Throughout the factor analysis, two factors emerged. These two factors were interpreted as "activity" factor and "evaluation" factor. The distributions of similes in the three emotions were relatively different in the two-dimensional factorial space, namely the affective meaning space. Throughout the discriminant analysis, "activity" and "evaluation" factors contributed to the understanding of the emotions expressed by the similes.These findings indicated that understanding of the emotions expressed by the similes was based on those two foctors.
