SEEING IS UNDERSTANDING: differences between deliberate and non-deliberate metaphors revealed in eye movements during literary reading

Abstract

When reading literature, we are confronted with creative metaphors that make us see the same words in a different way. Deliberate Metaphor Theory (DMT, Steen, 2008; 2011; 2017) proposes that these kind of metaphors, that serve a communicative function as metaphor, are radically different from metaphors that are not used with this communicative intention. The current study investigates differences in processing between these two types of metaphors, compared to literal expressions. Using the DMIP procedure, we identified metaphors in two literary stories. Participants (N=72) read these stories. Subsequently, a Linear Mixed model was created with gaze duration as the dependent variable, and metaphor type as the independent variable. Our results show that deliberate metaphors were read slower than non-deliberate metaphors, and that both metaphor types were read slower than literal expressions. Furthermore, these effects were moderated by reading experience. Higher reading experience led to faster reading for deliberate metaphors, but not for non-deliberate metaphors and literal expressions. These results support DMT, and provide a starting point for further research on deliberate metaphor processing.