Understanding mixed metaphor and conceptual metaphor theory

This paper describes four experimental studies on mixed metaphor and people's understandings of mixed metaphor and the ways these different metaphorical phrases get jumbled together. Mixed metaphors are language clusters of different metaphorical phrases that bring together multiple seemingly disparate metaphorical objects into a single phrase. Hypothesis 1 maintains that mixed metaphor is non-sensical speech reflecting confused thinking, and is therefore difficult if not impossible to interpret. Mixing metaphors together is confusing and has the same effect on comprehension. Hypothesis 2 emerges from conceptual metaphor theory which claims that metaphorical understanding is fundamental to human cognition and a strong element in structuring thinking and linguistic expression. According to this view, understanding disparate figurative objects in one discourse would require the instantiation of multiple parallel source-to-target domain mappings that may make the mixed metaphor partially understandable. The clustering in mixed metaphors is more difficult to interpret than metaphors that have consistent and parallel source-to-target domain mappings. According to Hypothesis 2, coherence is a mapping between one target and one source domain, forming the concept of parallelism in metaphor mapping theory. Mixing metaphors challenges the concept of parallelism and the cognitive theory's handling of the "language mishaps" in the "Block that Metaphor!" corpus.;Hypothesis 3 maintains that mixed metaphor understanding is not inhibited by the number of multiple metaphors and their distinct source domain objects that are combined in the mixed phrases because metaphor understanding reflects complex within source domain reasoning that is shaped by the "value neutral mapping adjuncts" (VNMA). VNMAs form to help deliver language specific affect through patterns of affect that transcend the utterance and the conceptual metaphors in nonparallel mapping. The VNMA adjunct links to the source domain and can potentially combine any number of non-parallel relations to broaden or restrict the scope of the conceptual metaphor mapping. The model view of the target domain contributes affective information, i.e. value, feelings, expectations, potentials, and cultural allowances that contribute affect. The affect was coded through the identification of non-linguistic modalities, e.g. the speaker's attitude and evaluations of the speaker's intended meaning that transcends the utterance. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...