head). The motivation for these particular folk conceptions comes from two
conceptual metaphors—ANGER IS PRESSURIZED HEAT and THE MIND IS A
CONTAINER. The mapping of information from different source (e.g., heated
fluid in a container) and target (e.g., the anger emotion) domains limits our
conceptualization of anger and motivates the idiomatic expressions we use to
talk about anger.
These mental imagery studies support the idea that the figurative meanings
of idioms are partly motivated by various conceptual metaphors that exist
independently as part of our conceptual system. Traditional theories of idio-
maticity have no way of accounting for these imagery findings because they
assume that the meanings of idioms arise from metaphors that are now dead
and no longer a prominent part of our everyday conceptual system. Similarly,
more recent linguistic accounts that suppose that idiomatic meanings arise
from generalizations across lexical items in these phrases are hard put to ac-
count for the mental imagery data. How, for example, do theories based on
lexical generalizations account for the specific inferences that people make for
anger idioms, for instance, that internal pressure causes the angry event; that
the anger action is involuntary; and that the action is performed in a rapid, vio-
lent manner? My argument is that lexical theories cannot explain the presence
of these specific inference patterns.
Psycholinguistic research has gone on to show that people’s knowledge of
the metaphorical links between different source and target domains provides
the basis for the appropriate use and interpretation of idioms in particular dis-
course situations (Gibbs & Nayak 1991; Nayak & Gibbs 1990). Participants in
one study, for example, gave higher appropriateness ratings toblew her stackin
a story that described the woman’s anger as being like heat in a pressurized
container, whereasbit his head offwas seen as more appropriate in a story that
described the woman’s anger in terms of a ferocious animal.Bite your head off
makes sense because people can link the lexical items in this phrase to the con-
ceptual metaphor ANGRY BEHAVIOR IS ANIMAL BEHAVIOR. An animal
jumping down a victim’s throat is similar to someone shouting angrily. On
the other hand, people understand the figurative meaning ofblow your stack
through the conceptual metaphor ANGER IS HEATED FLUID IN A CON-
TAINER, where a person shouting angrily has the same explosive effect as does
the top of a container blowing open under pressure. Thus, readers’ judgments
about the appropriateness of an idiom in context were influenced by the co-
herence between the metaphorical information depicted in a text and the con-
ceptual metaphor underlying an idiom’s figurative meaning. Even though we
may have many idiomatic phrases that refer to a single concept (e.g., anger),
some of these phrases may be motivated by different underlying conceptual
metaphors (e.g.,blow your stackvs.bite your head off). Because our ordinary
concepts are often understood via multiple and sometimes contradictory meta-
phors, it is no wonder that we have so many different kinds of idioms to reflect
the sometimes subtly different aspects of our everyday experience.
One important consequence of the idea that idioms reflect the metaphorical
mappings between source and target domains is that idioms are held to have
more complex meanings than are their typical literal paraphrases. These idi-
omatic meanings can be partly predicted, based on the independent assessment
742 Raymond W. Gibbs Jr.