The Career of Metaphor.

TLDR

A central question in metaphor research is how metaphors establish mappings between concepts from different domains. The authors propose an evolutionary path for metaphor development grounded in structure‑mapping theory. Their hypothesis, the career of metaphor, posits a shift from comparison‑based to categorization‑based mapping as metaphors become conventionalized. Three experiments show that this processing shift is reflected in the language people use for figurative assertions, and the hypothesis offers a unified framework resolving the comparison‑categorization debate while predicting that processing mode depends on conventionality and linguistic form.

Abstract

A central question in metaphor research is how metaphors establish mappings between concepts from different domains. The authors propose an evolutionary path based on structure-mapping theory. This hypothesis--the career of metaphor--postulates a shift in mode of mapping from comparison to categorization as metaphors are conventionalized. Moreover, as demonstrated by 3 experiments, this processing shift is reflected in the very language that people use to make figurative assertions. The career of metaphor hypothesis offers a unified theoretical framework that can resolve the debate between comparison and categorization models of metaphor. This account further suggests that whether metaphors are processed directly or indirectly, and whether they operate at the level of individual concepts or entire conceptual domains, will depend both on their degree of conventionality and on their linguistic form.