A STUDY OF METAPHOR IN THE WRITING OF NINE AND THIRTEEN-YEAR-OLDS, COLLEGE FRESHMEN, AND GRADUATE STUDENTS IN THE HUMANITIES AND IN THE SCIENCES (COMPOSITION, COGNITION, LITERACY)

It was the intent of this study to merge the substantive concerns of literary research with the pedagogic concerns of non-literary research in metaphor production. In uniting these two approaches, the study examines the content and cognitive processing of metaphors produced in essays by nine and thirteen-year-olds, college freshmen, and graduate students in the Humanities and in the Sciences; all 120 subjects wrote for an hour on the question, "What is 'success'?" Specifically, the study attempts to answer the following questions: (1) Do the occurrence of metaphors and the particular source domains of a writer's metaphors reflect a pattern which can be correlated to such variables as (a) age? (b) gender? and (c) academic discipline?; and (2) Is the ratio of two-domain processed to one-domain processed metaphors affected by such variables as the writer's (a) age? (b) gender? and (c) academic discipline?;Similarly, data from the graduate students indicate a correlation between metaphor production/processing and academic training. Graduates in the Humanities produced metaphors that reflect subjective concerns. In contrast, graduates in the Sciences produced metaphors that reflect objective concerns. This discipline-specific orientation in production is paralleled in the processing of self-generated metaphors. Additionally, unlike the younger samples, the graduate student samples reveal a correlation between metaphor production/processing and gender: females, particularly in the Sciences confirmed as metaphorically processed more metaphors than did males.;It is hoped this study reveals more to cognitive scientists about how individuals develop and refine their processing of disparate domains, and uncovers for composition theorists and educators how writers might be taught to identify and thus manipulate the metaphors they use.;The central findings indicate first that at least some nine-year-olds are capable of the formal operational thinking required to metaphorize. Metaphor production and processing increased with the subjects' age, so that the total developmental data indicate a correlation between metaphor production/processing and age, but not between metaphor production/processing and gender.