The Roles Of Enhancement And Inhibition In Chinese Metaphor Comprehension

Psychologists propose that successful language comprehension involves themodulation of enhancement and inhibition mechanisms. Inhibition mechanism caninhibit the activation of irrelevant information while enhancement mechanism canenhance the activation of relevant information. Present studies indicate that literallanguage comprehension such as vocabulary, syntax and text involves inhibition andenhancement and that the indicators of the effects are negative priming and positivepriming respectively. Some studies found that English metaphor comprehensioninvolved inhibition and enhancement mechanisms. Metaphor-irrelevant literalproperties of vehicles are inhibited while metaphor-relevant properties of vehicles areenhanced. However, some scholars suggested that the negative priming and positivepriming in these studies might be attributed to episodic trace retrieval. In order to ruleout the explanation of episodic trace retrieval, Glucksberg et al.(2001) adoptedindependent probe technique to explore the roles of inhibition and enhancement inmetaphor comprehension but found only the effects of inhibition. This might be dueto its experimental material and baselines.Chinese metaphors and English metaphors have some cultural differences, andthe effects of inhibition and enhancement on Chinese metaphors and Englishmetaphors might also differ. But the studies about the roles of these two mechanismsin Chinese metaphor comprehension are a few and the negative and positive primingfound in these studies can be explained by episodic trace retrieval. Therefore, theirresults are not so convincing. To overcome the methodological shortcomings ofprevious Chinese metaphor studies, the present study adopted independent probetechnique used by Glucksberg et al.(2001) to investigate the roles of inhibition andenhancement in Chinese metaphor comprehension. It explores the similarities anddifferences of the effects of these two mechanisms in vehicle properties and in topicproperties in order to explore the roles of topics and vehicles in metaphorcomprehension and to provide hints for metaphor comprehension models.The present study aims at exploring the following six research questions. 1) Is the comprehension of TMR (salient topic metaphor-relevant property) when it ispreceded by the metaphor significantly faster than when it is preceded by the topicbaseline?2) Is the comprehension of TMI (salient topic literal property unrelated to themetaphorical meaning) when it is preceded by the metaphor significantly slower thanwhen it is preceded by the topic baseline?3) Is the comprehension of VMR(salient vehicle metaphor-relevant property) when itis preceded by the metaphor significantly faster than when it is preceded by thevehicle baseline?4) Is the comprehension of VMI (salient vehicle literal property unrelated to themetaphorical meaning) when it is preceded by the metaphor significantly slower thanwhen it is preceded by the vehicle baseline?5) Do the positive priming effects on TMR differ significantly from those on VMRproperties?6) Do the negative priming effects on TMI differ significantly from those on VMIproperties?To explore these questions, the present paper did an experiment, which 64freshmen from South China Normal University took part in. The experiment usedstandard metaphors as materials and employed two 2X2 within subject designs.Sensibility judgment task was used to explore the effects of inhibition andenhancement on the verification times of topic properties and vehicle properties.Through statistical analysis, the following results were obtained.1) The comprehension of TMR when it is preceded by the metaphor is significantlyfaster than when it is preceded by the topic baseline. This indicates that TMRproperties are enhanced in metaphor comprehension.2) The comprehension of TMI when it is preceded by the metaphor is significantlyslower than when it is preceded by the topic baseline. This indicates that TMIproperties are inhibited in metaphor comprehension.3) The comprehension of VMR when it is preceded by the metaphor is significantlyfaster than when it is preceded by the vehicle baseline. This indicates that VMR properties are enhanced in metaphor comprehension.4) The comprehension of VMI when it is preceded by the metaphor is significantlyslower than when it is preceded by the vehicle baseline. This indicates that VMIproperties are inhibited in metaphor comprehension.5) The positive priming effects on TMR do not differ significantly from those onVMR properties.6) The negative priming effects on TMI do not differ significantly from those on VMIproperties.With the results obtained from the experiment, the present study concludes thatmetaphor comprehension involves inhibition and enhancement mechanisms. Thesetwo mechanisms have effects on both topic properties and vehicle properties. Theseeffects do not differ significantly.The present study lends support to the Structure BuildingFramework(Gernsbacher, 1990) and proves that language comprehension includingmetaphor comprehension involves enhancement and inhibition mechanisms. Thepresent study also supports the view that metaphor is processed in a manneranalogous to literal language.