data from these studies are important because they provide an independent,
nonlinguistic way of partially predicting what specific meanings some idioms
are likely to possess, based on the analyses of certain metaphorical concepts in
long-term memory. As such, this experimental work is an important, perhaps
necessary, complement to cognitive linguistic analyses of idiomaticity.
Metaphor and Immediate Idiom Comprehension
The experimental evidence on the conceptual basis for interpreting idioms is
not representative of evidence used in contemporary psycholinguistic research.
Psycholinguists traditionally attempt to formulate theories of linguistic under-
standing to account for moment-by-moment language processing. Only experi-
mental methodologies that tap into what people actually, and unconsciously,
do online at the very moment when comprehension occurs are thought to be
appropriate in studying normal utterance understanding. People might tacitly
recognize that idioms have meanings that are motivated by different kinds of
conceptual knowledge. But this does not mean that people access this concep-
tual knowledge each and every time they encounter certain idioms.
Several sets of studies are currently being conducted to examine whether
people actually access metaphorical knowledge during the immediate, online
processing of idioms. Participants in a first study read simple stories one line at
a time on a computer screen with each story ending in one of three different
phrases. The following is an example of one story along with each of its differ-
ent final phrases.
(2) John lent his new car to a friend, Sally.
When Sally later returned the car, the front end was badly damaged.
When Sally showed John the car,
He blew his stack. (appropriate idiom)
He got very angry. (literal paraphrase)
He saw many dents. (control phrase)
After reading the final phrase and pushing the comprehension button, the
participants were immediately presented with a letter string on the computer
screen and their task was to decide as quickly as possible if the letter string
constituted an English word (i.e., a lexical decision task). These letter strings or
targets were either words that represented a conceptual metaphor motivating
the appropriate idiom (e.g.,heat, which represents ANGER IS HEATED FLUID
IN A CONTAINER), or nonword letter strings (e.g.,saet).
If people actually access specific conceptual metaphors (e.g., ANGER IS
HEATED FLUID) while comprehending certain idioms phrases (e.g.,He blew
his stack), then this activated metaphorical knowledge should facilitate or prime
participants’ responses to the metaphor targets (e.g.,heat), such that they re-
spond more quickly than after reading either the literal paraphrases or the
control phrases. In fact, participants responded significantly faster to the meta-
phoric targets when they had just read the idioms rather than either the literal
phrases or the control expressions. Of course, people may respond faster toheat
after having readblew his stacksimplybecauseofsomepreexistingsemantic
associations between the literal words in the expressions. Yet a follow-up study
744 Raymond W. Gibbs Jr.