gibbs - conceptual knowledge - zapravo contextual appropr

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General1990, Vol. II9, No. 3, 315-330

Copyright 1990 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.0096-3445/90/500.75

Conceptual Knowledge in the Interpretation of Idioms

Nandini P. Nayak and Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr.Program in Experimental PsychologyUniversity of California, Santa Cruz

The authors examined how people determine the contextual appropriateness of idioms. In

Experiment 1, idioms referring to the same temporal stage of a conceptual prototype were judged

to be more similar in meaning than idioms referring to different temporal stages. In Experiment

2, idioms in a prototypical temporal sequence were more meaningful than idioms in sentencesthat violated the temporal sequence. In Experiment 3, idioms referring to the same stage of a

conceptual prototype were differentiable on the basis of conceptual information. The conceptual

coherence between idioms and contexts facilitated the processing speed of idioms in Experiment4. Experiment 5 showed that speakers can recover the underlying conceptual metaphors that link

an idiom to its figurative meaning. Experiment 6 showed that the metaphoric information

reflected in the lexical makeup of idioms also determined the metaphoric appropriateness of

idioms in certain contexts.

American English has many idioms with similar figurativemeanings. For example, speakers can express the idea of"getting angry" by using any of the idiomatic phrases blowyour stack, lose your cool, flip your lid, get hot under thecollar, or hit the roof. Idiom and slang dictionaries have manylists of such expressions referring to similar concepts or mean-ings (Boatner, Gates, & Makkai, 1975; Cowie, Mackin, &McCaig, 1983; Long & Summers, 1979). These dictionariestypically illustrate the meanings of idioms by placing them inspecific discourse contexts. Consider the following example:

When his sister came back with a huge dent in his Alfa Romeo,Jeffflipped his lid. (1)

Most speakers would agree that the idiom flipped his lid isappropriately used in Example I. Now consider Example 2:

When his sister came back with a huge dent in his Alfa Romeo,Jeff did a slow burn. (2)

The idiom did a slow burn does not appear to fit this contextas well as flipped his lid. There are subtle but significantdifferences between these two phrases despite their havinghighly similar, or even identical, interpretations (i.e., "gotangry"). Each phrase seems to convey a very specific meaningso that it is appropriate to use only in particular contexts.What determines people's intuitions that some idioms, butnot others, are appropriate to use in specific discourse con-texts?

According to traditional theories of idiomaticity, idiomaticphrases are discretely represented either as part of the normallexicon (Swinney & Cutler, 1979) or in a special idiom list orphrasal lexicon (Bobrow & Bell, 1973; Gasser & Dyer, 1986;Weinreich, 1969; Wilensky & Arens, 1980) without any spe-cific organization linking idioms that have common concep-tual referents. For example, idioms such as flip your lid, blow

Preparation of this article was supported by Grant MH42980 fromthe National Institute of Mental Health and by a Faculty Research

Gram from the University of California, Santa Cruz.Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to

Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr., Program in Experimental Psychology, Clark

Ken- Hall, University of California, Santa Cruz, California 95064.

your top, and get on one's nerves are individually representedin the mental lexicon along with their arbitrarily stipulatedfigurative meanings. There are no particular reasons why theseidioms mean what they do or why there are so many differentidioms with similar interpretations. Some idiom dictionariesacknowledge that closely synonymous idioms, ones that seeminterchangeable in many sentences, will still differ by somecharacteristic (Cowie et al., 1983). From this general idea, onemight argue, for example, that the phrase flip his lid denotes(a) being angry, (b) the activity of experiencing anger, and (c)an abrupt onset of anger. In contrast, do a slow burn denotes(a) being angry, (b) the activity of coming to terms with theanger-provoking situation, and (c) a long duration, ratherthan an abrupt onset, of the anger experience. Nonetheless,linguistic and psychological models do not propose that idi-omatic meaning is best mentally or formally represented bycomplex semantic configurations. This is somewhat remark-able, given that theories of lexical meaning invariably proposecomplex semantic configurations for individual lexemes (e.g.,Cruse, 1986).

Although it is unclear as to whether traditional models ofidiomaticity could capture the fact that many idioms appearto have complex meanings, no theorist has attempted to doso. Part of this neglect stems from the fact that languagetheorists have been primarily interested in the syntactic prop-erties of idioms and have assumed that the figurative mean-ings of idioms are roughly equivalent with simple literalparaphrases (e.g., kick the bucket means "to die," and on thewagon means "to abstain from alcoholic drink"). Anotherreason for the failure to consider idioms as having complexmeaning comes from the common assumption that mostidioms are "dead" metaphors: Idiomatic phrases once hadmetaphorical origins but have lost their metaphoricity overtime and now exist as simple lexical items (Aitchison, 1987;Brooke-Rose, 1958; Chomsky, 1965; Cooper, 1986; Eraser,1970; Katz, 1973; Makkai, 1972; Strassler, 1982; Weinreich,1969). The "dead metaphor" view of idioms also suggests thatidioms are noncompositional, because the figurative mean-ings of these phrases are not functions of the meanings oftheir parts (Chomsky, 1965, 1980). Learning the meanings of

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316 NANDINI P. NAYAK AND RAYMOND W. GIBBS, JR.

idioms requires that speakers form arbitrary links betweenidioms and their nonliteral meanings to recognize that spillthe beans = "to reveal a secret," flip your lid = "to get angry,"and so on.

Recently, linguistic and psycholinguistic researchers havetaken issue with these long-standing beliefs about idiomatic-ity. This work has shown that the individual words in manyidioms systematically contribute to the overall figurative inter-pretations of these phrases (Fillmore, Kay, & O'Connor, 1988;Gibbs & Nayak, 1989; Lakoff, 1987; Langacker, 1986; Lind-ner, 1983; Nunberg, 1978; Wasow, Sag, & Nunberg, 1982).For example, speakers know that spill the beans is analyzablebecause beans refers to an idea or secret and spilling refers tothe act of revealing the secret. People's intuitions about theanalyzability of idioms play an important role in determiningthese phrases' syntactic productivity (Gibbs & Nayak, 1989)and lexical flexibility (Gibbs, Nayak, Bolton, & Keppel, 1989).Furthermore, it appears that readers normally attempt toperform compositional analyses of idiom strings during un-derstanding when the parts of idioms are assigned independ-ent but not necessarily literal meanings that contribute to theoverall figurative meanings of these expression (Gibbs, Nayak,& Cutting, 1989).

These empirical studies suggest that the meanings of idiomscan be partially motivated in that speakers recognize somerelation between the words in idioms and their overall figur-ative interpretations (Gibbs & O'Brien, in press). Usually, themore salient an individual part is within an idiom, the morelikely it is that that component or word shares the samesemantic field as does its idiomatic referent. Semantic fieldsare clusters of lexical items that share some nuclear conceptor feature (Miller & Johnson-Laird, 1976) or that go togetherbecause they pertain to the same knowledge about some event(Kittay & Lehrer, 1981) or to the same "experiential gestalt"(Lakoff, 1987; Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). When speakers judgethat the idiom let off steam is analyzable or decomposable,they are essentially finding some relation between the com-ponents let off and steam with their figurative referents "re-lease" and "anger." It is not surprising that the noun steamand the concept of anger are part of the same semantic fieldbecause anger is metaphorically understood in terms of heatand internal pressure (Lakoff, 1987; Lakoff & Johnson, 1980).This relation between the internal parts of idioms and theirfigurative referent clearly motivates both the meanings ofidioms and people's understanding of these phrases (Gibbs &Nayak, 1989; Gibbs & O'Brien, in press).

Our aim in this research was to explore the role of concep-tual knowledge in idiomatic language use and interpretation.We attempted to demonstrate that the contextual appropri-ateness of idioms is not an arbitrary phenomena but can bereadily explained by the conceptual links between an idiomand a given situational context. The primary hypothesis in-vestigated here was that idioms map onto different propertiesof the concepts that they express, so that some idioms areappropriate to use in some discourse contexts but not others,despite similarities in these phrases' figurative meanings (Ko-vecses, 1986; Lakoff, 1987). Consider the following scenario:

When his sister came back with a huge dent in his new AlfaRomeo, it really got on Jeff's nerves. He promptly blew his top.Eventually he cooled down and forgave her. (3)

The idioms get on his nerves, blew his lop, and cooled down

refer to the concept of anger, but each phrase corresponds toa particular part of that concept. The idiom get on his nerves

refers to the earliest stage when a person's anger is provokedby some event. This provocation is followed by the next stage,in which angry behavior is displayed, which can be linguisti-cally expressed in the phrase blew his top. The final stage ofreturning to equanimity is exemplified in the idiom cooled

down. Most people have no difficulty making sense of thestory in Example 3 because it describes a coherent temporalsequence of events that is typical of anger. Readers' sensitivityto the appropriateness of idioms in different discourse con-texts might be based on their knowledge of the temporalstructure of a concept. Thus, you do not get red in the faceunless something has got under your skin, and if you haveflipped your lid, you have also blown your top.

One purpose of our studies was to demonstrate that thetemporal structure of concepts plays a role in readers' inter-pretation of idioms. There is much evidence in cognitivepsychology that our conceptual knowledge is organizedaround "best examples" or prototypes (see Rosch, 1975).These prototype-based conceptual structures often encompasstemporal information in which events are organized in asequence (see Abbott, Black, & Smith, 1985; Bower, Black,& Turner, 1979; Galambos & Rips, 1982; Graesser, Woll,Kowalski, & Smith, 1980; Nottenburg & Shoben, 1980;Schank & Abelson, 1977). People have temporally organizedinformation for mundane concepts such as "going to a restau-rant," as well as for abstract concepts, such as those having todo with emotions (Fehr & Russell, 1984; Reiser, Black, &Lehnert, 1985; Shaver, Schwartz, Kirson, & O'Connor, 1987).For instance, an emotion concept such as anger is prototypi-cally understood to be composed of a sequence of eventsbeginning with a set of "antecedent conditions," a set of"behavioral responses," and a set of "self-control procedures"(Shaver et al., 1987). The temporal organization of manyconceptual structures such as anger are reflected in the lan-guage used to refer to that concept (Lakoff, 1987). ThusEnglish has different idioms fitting each of the three stages forour concept of anger. The antecedent conditions (Stage 1) foranger concern a sudden loss of power, status, or respect, ideasexemplified by idioms such as eat humble pie, kick in theteeth, and swallow one's pride. The behavioral conditions(Stage 2) for anger concern people's behavioral responses tothe emotion, an idea best reflected in idioms such as getting

red in the face, getting hot under the collar, or blowing yourstack. The self-control procedures (Stage 3) concern a person'sefforts to maintain composure, an idea that is best reflectedin idiomatic phrases such as keep your cool and hold yourtemper.

Idioms that refer to the same temporal stage of a conceptualprototype appear to be highly similar in meaning. For exam-ple, do a slow burn and blow your stack both mean "getangry." It is likely that similarities in the figurative meaningsof idioms arise from their referring to the same temporal stageof a conceptual prototype (e.g.. Stage 2). This possibilityimplies, in contrast to the view of traditional theories, thatidioms are linked together in the mental lexicon on the basisof the temporal stage of the concept to which each idiomrefers. Thus referring to the same temporal stage (e.g., blow

IDIOM INTERPRETATION 317

your stack and do a slow burn) may be more closely linkedwith all the phrases sharing the same semantic space than areidioms that express different temporal aspects (e.g., do a slowburn and hold your temper).

In Experiments 1-4, we investigated the hypothesis thatpeople's sensitivity to similarity in the meanings of idioms isbased, in part, on whether these phrases express the sametemporal aspect of the prototype to which they refer (e.g.,blow your top said flip your lid). Idiomatic phrases map ontodifferent aspects of a concept. Discourse contexts providesignificant conceptual cues that should facilitate people's judg-ments about the appropriate use and interpretation of idioms.We specifically examined whether readers use their under-standing of the temporal sequences inherent in emotion con-cepts when interpreting the appropriateness of idioms invarying discourse situations. In Experiments 5 and 6, weexamined the role that people's knowledge of conceptualmetaphor plays in their interpretation of idioms. The mainpoint of our experiments was to show that the depiction ofconcepts in story contexts affects idiom interpretation specif-ically because idioms themselves map onto different aspectsof concepts.

The data that we report in these studies argue against thealternative idea that the context-sensitive use of idioms isprimarily due to arbitrary, pragmatic conventions of use.Accordingly, people find some idioms, but not others, appro-priate for a context because of arbitrary, perhaps historicalreasons, but they tacitly agree to use idioms in this way as amatter of convention (cf. Lewis, 1969). For instance, it isconventional within our culture to greet someone by inquiringafter the other person's health (e.g., "How are you?" or "Howhave you been?"), whereas in some other cultures, it is con-ventional to greet someone by asking about the other person'sgastronomic welfare (e.g., "Have you eaten?"; Morgan, 1978).Whether a particular culture uses one form of greeting asopposed to another is to some extent arbitrary. These culturalconventions about the uses of language are difierent fromconventions about the meaning of language (Morgan, 1978).

Various scholars have suggested that conventions of usageplay a key role in determining the appropriateness of differentlinguistic expressions in different contexts (Morgan, 1978;Searle, 1975). The use of idioms might very well be deter-mined by such arbitrary conventions of usage. For example,the use of the expression break a leglo wish a performer goodluck before a performance originated with the old superstitionthat it would be bad luck to wish someone good luck. Con-sequently, people started wishing their fellow actors good luckby wishing them bad luck (i.e., a broken leg). Over time, thechoice of break a leg became rigidly fixed as a convention,one reason why similar phrases will not serve the same pur-pose (e.g., fracture a tibia, I hope you break your leg).

There are certainly many conventions of usage that deter-mine the context-sensitive use of idioms, such as for break aleg. At the same time, there exist many idioms in AmericanEnglish that seem quite "dead," and people can only guess asto why these phrases mean what they do. For example, thephrase kick the bucket is said to come from a method ofslaughtering hogs in which the animal was strung up on aheavy framework and its throat was cut. Bucket is thought tobe an English corruption of buquet, a French word for the

wooden framework that the hog kicked in its death struggles.Buquet is not a word found in modern French dictionaries,but boucher (meaning "butcher") is common and is cognatewith the source of the English word butcher (Urdang, 1988).There are many idioms in American English that have opaqueorigins, as does kick the bucket, and it is unlikely that peoplepossess any specific conceptual knowledge that underlies theiruse and interpretation. Nonetheless, it may very well be thatthe appropriateness of many idioms for different contextscould be explained by people's conceptual knowledge of thereferent domains to which idioms refer. There are hundreds,perhaps thousands, of idioms that may map directly ontopeople's conceptual knowledge. Traditional theories of idio-maticity do not provide a principled explanation for whysome idioms are more appropriate to use in a given discoursesituation than are other idioms with similar nonliteral mean-ings. Our goal is to show that the use of many idioms ismotivated by people's conceptual knowledge.

Experiment 1

The goal of the first study was to investigate whether idiomsreferring to a common concept are semantically differentiableon the basis of the temporal structure of the underlyingconceptual prototype. Subjects were presented with pairs ofidioms that referred to a common concept and were asked tojudge their similarity of meaning. All of the idioms referredto one of four emotion concepts that have previously beenshown to be structured as a prototype embodying a series oftemporal stages (cf. Fehr & Russell, 1984; Reiser et al., 1985;Shaver et al., 1987). For example, the prototypical structureof the concept for fear consists of three distinct stages: theperception of danger, a reaction of fearfulness, and an attemptto defend against the fearful situation. Our hypothesis wasthat people's intuitions about the similarity of meaning be-tween idioms (e.g., play with fire, go out on a limb, and heartstand still) should arise from the prototypic structure of theconceptual knowledge to which each idiom refers. Idiom pairscomposed of phrases that refer to the same temporal stage ofa prototypical concept (e.g., play with fire and go out on alimb) should be judged as being more similar in meaning thanidiom pairs composed of phrases from different stages of theprototype (e.g., play with fire and shake in your shoes), Apragmatic theory of idioms would suggest simply that thereshould be no evidence that some pairs of idioms are moreclosely related in meaning than others because all the pairshave essentially similar figurative meanings (e.g., "be in afearful or in a frightening situation").

Method

Subjects. Twenty-two undergraduates from the University of Cal-ifornia, Santa Cruz participated as subjects to fulfill a class require-

ment. All subjects in this study, and those that follow, were nativeEnglish speakers.

Stimuli and design The stimuli were constructed in four steps.

We first described the conceptual prototypes for four emotion con-cepts (anger, fear, joy, and sorrow) following Shaver et al. (1987).

Each concept had three main stages that can be described as follows:For anger, Stage 1 is an anger-provoking situation, Stage 2 is angry

318 NANDINI P. NAYAK. AND RAYMOND W. GIBBS, JR.

behavior, and Stage 3 is coming to terms with anger-provoking

situation. For fear, Stage 1 is a dangerous situation, Stage 2 is fearful

behavior, and Stage 3 is defensive reactions. For joy, Stage 1 is hard

work, Stage 2 is achievement of success, and Stage 3 is the reaction

to success. For sorrow, Stage I is perception of failure, Stage 2 is

feelings of humiliation and sorrow, and Stage 3 is coming to terms

with the situation.

We next selected 12 idioms for each prototypical concept on the

basis of the similarity of their paraphrased meanings, as shown by

Boatner et at. (1975). For example, the idioms play with fire, hang by

a thread, out on a limb, and the game is up all describe situations of

danger. The 12 idioms for each concept were judged by two inde-pendent judges as best reflecting one of the three stages for that

concept; thus there were 4 idioms for each stage for each concept.

Because there are no objective frequency counts for idioms, we

equated the phrases used in this and subsequent experiments on

subjective familiarity by asking subjects in each experiment to check

off, before they began the actual experiment, those idioms whose

meanings they did not know. All idioms used in these studies werefamiliar to 95% of the subjects. Subjects who did not know the

meanings of some idioms were asked not to respond to items that

contained those specific idioms.

Each of the 12 idioms within a concept was paired with an idiom

belonging to either the same stage or a different stage of the conceptual

prototype. The following pairs are representative of the stimuli from

the fear concept: An example of a same-stage pair (danger-danger)

was play with fire and go out on a limb; an example of a different-stage pair (danger-fearfulness) was play with fire and shake in one's

shoes; an example of a different-stage pair (danger-defensiveness) was

go out on a limb and beat a hasty retreat.

There were 6 same-stage pairs and 12 different-stage pairs for each

concept. The different-stage pairs were constructed in such a way that

any idiom was paired with an idiom from one of the other stages

only once (i.e., Stages I and 2; Stages 1 and 3 and Stages 2 and 3).

This resulted in 18 pairs for each concept. Table 1 is a partial list of

these stimulus items. The 72 pairs of idioms were presented to subjectsin a completely within-subjects design with concept type (anger, fear,

joy, and sorrow) and idiom pairs (same-stage vs. different-stage) as

the independent variables.Procedure. Subjects were presented with a booklet containing the

72 pairs of idioms in a randomized order. The subjects were instructed

to carefully read each pair of idioms and rate how similar they were

in meaning on a 7-point scale (1 = not at all similar in meaning and

7 = highly similar in meaning).

Table 1

Examples of Stimuli for Experiment I

Anger

Same stagewhen someone puts a cog in your wheelwhen someone steals your thunder

Different stagewhen someone puts a cog in your wheelwhen you get hot and bothered

Different stagewhen someone steals your thunderwhen you bear the brunt

Joy

Same stagewhen you leave no stone unturnedwhen you burn the midnight oil

Different stagewhen you leave no stone unturnedwhen you make the grade

Different stagewhen you burn the midnight oilwhen you talk big

Fear

Same stagewhen you beat a hasty retreatwhen you put up a fight

Different stagewhen you play with firewhen you beat a hasty retreat

Different stagewhen your teeth chatterwhen you put up a fight

Success

Same stagewhen you put on a bold facewhen you touch bottom

Different stagewhen you make a mess of itwhen you put on a bold face

Different stagewhen you have your face rubbed in itwhen you touch bottom

Results and Discussion

Subjects' ratings reflect their intuitions about the degree to

which two idioms are similar in meaning. High numerical

ratings indicated that subjects judged the idioms in a pair to

be highly similar in meaning; low ratings indicated that the

two idioms were seen as being less similar in meaning.

We performed each analysis of variance (ANOVA) twice:

once treating subjects as a random factor while collapsing

over materials (F\), and once treating materials as the random

factor while collapsing across subjects (F2). Only effects sig-

nificant in both analyses are reported. Min F' statistics are

also reported when appropriate, as suggested by H. Clark

(1973).

The mean rating for the same-stage items was higher (5.19)

than the mean for the different-stage items (2.45). A 4 x 3

(Concept Type x Idiom Pair) ANOVA revealed a significant

main effect of idiom pair, F,(4, 84) = 97.52, p < .001; F2(4,

36) = 20.71, p < .001; min F'(4, 52) = 17.08, p < .01. No

other effects were significant in either the subject or the item

analyses. The results confirmed the hypothesis that people

find idioms belonging to the same temporal stage of a con-

ceptual prototype (e.g., play with fire and go out on a limb)

to be more similar in meaning than idioms that refer to

different stages (e.g., play with fire and shake in one's shoes).

Subjects distinguished between idioms with similar figurative

meanings on the basis of the temporal structure of the under-

lying concept to which the idioms refer. These findings suggest

that idioms may not be listed distinctly in the mental lexicon

with no reference to other idioms, but they could be linked

together by the temporally ordered category to which they

correspond.

Experiment 2

The goal of Experiment 2 was to investigate whether peo-

ple's knowledge of temporal structure in emotion concepts


motivates their intuitions about the meaninfgul use of theseexpressions. Subjects in this experiment were presented withsentences in which two idioms were separated by the con-junction but and a negative marker (e.g., "John's bad mannersgot on Sally's nerves, but she didn't flip her lid"). The subjects'task was to rate the meamngfiilness of each sentence. Ourhypothesis was that the meaningrulness of "Idiom 1 but notIdiom 2" sentences depends on the temporal ordering of thedifferent idioms (see Lakoff, 1987). If two idioms in a sentencereflect different stages in the prototype for an emotion con-cept, such as anger, then combining the two idioms shouldbe acceptable only when the temporal sequence was in keep-ing with the prototypical scenario, as in "It got on his nerves,but he didn't blow his top." The idiom got on his nervesbelongs to Stage 1 (provocation) of the anger prototype,whereas the idiom blow his top belongs to Stage 2 (angrybehavior). Any sentence in which the two idioms are in correcttemporal order as defined by the conceptual prototype shouldbe judged as relatively meaningful.

Unacceptable or less meaningful sentences violate the pro-totypical sequence. For instance, the sentence "He blew histop, but he didn't flip his lid" is contradictory and thusunacceptable because the two idioms both refer to Stage 2(angry behavior) of the prototype. The use of both blew histop and flip his lid in the same sentence, separated by thenegative conjunction but he didn't is similar to saying "Hewas angry, but he wasn't angry," which obviously does notmake sense. We predicted that subjects would find sentenceswith idioms from the same stage of a prototype to be lessmeaningful than sentences that contain a linear (appropriate)sequence of idioms. Another unacceptable "Idiom 1 but notIdiom 2" sentence arises when two stages of a prototype arereversed, as in "He flipped his lid, but it didn't get on hisnerves." One would expect that the person passes through thestage of "something getting on his nerves" (i,e., Stage 1:provocation) before he "flips his lid" (i.e., Stage 2: angrybehavior) because angry behavior is prototypically precededby some provocation. Once again, sentences violating thetemporal sequence inherent in the emotion concept would bejudged as less meaningful than sentences containing idiomsreferring to a correct temporal sequence of the underlyingconcept.

Table 2Examples of Stimuli for Experiment 2

AppropriateJohn's bad manners got on Sally's nerves, but she didn't flip her

lidContradictory

When Dad found out Johnny had totaled the new car, he flippedhis lid, but he didn't blow his top.

ReversedWhen Janice saw her husband flirting with the attractive blond at

the office party, she flipped her lid, but it didn't get on her nerves.

Fear

AppropriateThe sound of the wind in the rafters of the old house made Ruth's

flesh creep, but she didn't make a run for it.Contradictory

When the sound of the footsteps following her down the desertedstreet became louder and louder, Grade pushed the panic button,but she wasn't frightened out of her wits.

ReversedThe sound of the rattler's hiss made Larry run for his life, but he

wasn't shaking in his shoes.

Sorrow

AppropriateTom lost to Bill in the final tennis match. He has egg on his face,

but he hasn't touched bottom.Contradictory

Ever since she lost her tittle boy in that awful car accident, Judy'sbeen keeping a stiff upper lip, but she isn't putting on a boldface.

ReversedSince the divorce, Sammy's been drowning his sorrows but he isn't

down in the mouth.

Joy

AppropriateWhen Jason passed his final at the top of his class, he felt he had

made the grade, but he isn't giving himself airs.Contradictory

Ever since she got the prestigious Baker account for the firm, Lucy'sbeen on top of the world, but she isn't on cloud nine.

ReversedJanet's been on top of the world since the results of the final exam

were out, but she didn't make the grade.

Method

Subjects. Twenty-seven undergraduate students from the Univer-

sity of California, Santa Cruz, participated as subjects to fijlfill acourse requirement.

Stimuli and design. The idioms used in this experiment were the

same as in Experiment 1. Nine sentences of the form "Idiom 1 but

not Idiom 2" were constructed for each of the four conceptual

domains of anger, fear, sorrow, and joy. Each set of sentences con-

tained three appropriate sentences that maintained the correct se-quence of events, as in "It got on his nerves, but he didn't blow his

top" (Stages 1 and 2, 2 and 3, or 1 and 3); three contradictorysentences that included idioms from the same stage as in "He blew

his top, but he didn't flip his lid" (Stages 1 and 2, 2 and 2, or 3 and3); and three reverse sentences that included idioms from the reversed

stages of a prototype as in "He flipped his lid, but it didn't get on his

nerves" (Stages 2 and 1, 3 and 1, or 3 and 2). There were a total,then, of 36 stimulus items. Table 2 is a partial list of these stimuli.

All of the stimulus sentences were presented in random order in abooklet in a complete within-subjects 4 x 3 (Concept Type x IdiomPair) design.

Procedure. Subjects were presented with a booklet containing the

36 sentences and asked to rate on a 7-point scale the meaningfulnessof each sentence (1 = not at all meaningful and 7 = highly meaning-

ful}. Subjects entered their judgments for each sentence on theresponse sheet provided. The experiment took about 20 min to

complete.


Subjects' ratings of the sentences reflect their intuitionsabout the degree to which idioms are meaningfully used inthe given sentences. High numerical ratings indicated thatsubjects thought the sentence to be highly meaningful; lowratings indicated that an idiom was less meaningful. The


mean ratings for the three types of sentences indicated thatappropriate items received a higher rating (5.36) than eitherthe contradictory (2.60) or the reversed (2.78) items. Analysesof variance revealed a significant main effect of idiom pairs,F,(2, 52) = 182.20, p < .001; F2(2, 24) = 39.63, p < .001;min F'(2, 35) = 32.55, p < .01. The main effect of conceptwas not significant, nor was the Concept x Idiom Pairsinteraction. Scheffe tests showed that sentences with appro-priate idioms were more acceptable than either the contradic-tory or the reversed sentences (ps < .01 for both comparisons).

Contradictory and reverse items did not differ significantly.The findings of Experiment 2 demonstrated that not only

are idioms categorizable on the basis of the temporal stageswithin a prototype, but these categories are also systematicallyrelated to one another in a strict temporal sequence. Idiomswith similar figurative meanings may be clustered around theconceptual prototype to which they refer, individual idiomsbeing temporally linked much like our temporal knowledgeof the events of mundane concepts such as "going to arestaurant" (see Abbott et al., 1985; Bower et al., 1979;Galambos& Rips, 1982; Nottenburg& Shoben, 1980; Schank& Abelson, 1977). Such a representation scheme would bemore parsimonious than the traditional view of idioms thatrequires a separately stipulated meaning for each idiom (letoff steam = get angry, flip your lid = get angry, get hot and

bothered = get angry, etc.).

Experiment 3

Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that the temporal se-quencing inherent in conceptual prototypes is used by readersin differentiating between idioms that refer to the same con-cept. These studies showed that idioms referring to the samestage of a conceptual prototype are judged as being highlysimilar in meaning. Experiment 3 was conducted to examinewhether subjects can make even finer semantic distinctionsbetween idioms that refer to the same stage of the prototype.For instance, there are a number of idioms that refer to Stage2 of the conceptual prototype for anger (let off steam, get hot

and bothered, blow your slack and get red in the face). How-ever, these idioms may not be identical in meaning as theydo not appear to be equally appropriate in every context.Consider the following two examples:

When Billy told his father he had totaled his new Porsche, hisfather flipped his lid. (4)

When Billy told his father he had totaled his new Porsche, hisfather got hot under the coVar. (5)

The idiom flipped his lid in Example 4 appears to be moreappropriate in this context than does the idiom get hot underthe collar, even though both phrases figuratively mean "getangry." Our hypothesis was that such judgments are made onthe basis of how the linguistic context encodes informationabout a particular stage of the conceptual prototype. Contextsdesigned to reflect a particular aspect of a temporal stage aredifferentiable from contexts that reflect a different part of aprototype. For example, consider the context in Example 6:

When Billy told his father that he had to stay late for detention,his father got hot under the collar (6)

The idiom got hot under the collar fits better in Example 6than it does in Example 5, even though both contexts describesituations arousing angry behavior. These intuitions may beascribed to people's knowledge that the irritating event inExample 6 evokes less anger than the irritating event describedin Example 5. After all, destroying a car is more costly thanhaving to stay late for detention. The intuition that get hotunder the collar is more appropriate to use in Example 6results from people's expectation that the story charactershould experience a particular degree of anger, given the eventdescribed in the story. The idioms that follow the context inExamples 4 and 6 (flipped his lid and got hot under the collar)are compatible with these expectations. However, the idiomfollowing the context in Example 5 (got hot under the collar)is less compatible with this expectation as readers expect agreater degree of anger than that reflected in the meaning ofthis idiom. The conceptual compatibility between an idiomand its context is the basis on which people judge the contex-tual appropriateness of idiomatic phrases.

The aim of Experiments 3 and 4 was to see whether readersmake reliable distinctions between idioms that belong to aparticular stage of a conceptual prototype. Subjects in Exper-iment 3 were presented with story contexts that depicted aparticular temporal stage of a prototype for an emotion con-cept. Each story ended in an idiom that referred to the samestage of the prototype as the context. The subjects' task in thisstudy was to judge the appropriateness of each idiom in astory context. Our expectation was that readers would findone idiom to be more appropriate for a particular contextthan another, despite the fact that these phrases were similarin meaning because they referred to the same stage of aconceptual prototype. More specifically, we predicted thatsubjects would find that some idioms better reflected thedegree of emotional intensity in each story, even though bothidioms corresponded to the same stage of a conceptual pro-totype.

Method

Subjects, Twenty-eight undergraduates from the University of

California, Santa Cruz, participated as subjects for this experiment

Stimuli and design. Two pairs of idioms for the three stages ofthe four emotion concepts were chosen as stimuli; thus there were 24

pairs in all. These idioms were the same idiom pairs that were rated

as highly similar in meaning in Experiment 1. However, two inde-

pendent judges rated one idiom from each pair as reflecting a moreintense degree of the emotion concept to which the pair of idioms

referred. For vxs.mfAz, flipping your lid was viewed as a more extreme

display of angry behavior at Stage 2 Uian was letting off steam. Wethen constructed story contexts that reflected the figurative meaning

of each idiom so that one context illustrated a more extreme degreeof the emotion concept than its corresponding pair did. We refer to

these stimuli as original contexts for each idiom, as shown in the

following examples for one pair of idioms:

Sammy is a very patient man. He has been waiting for Ellen toshow up for their date for over an hour. With every passingminute Sammy is letting off steam. (1)

Harry was very proud of his new Alfa Romeo and let his sisterborrow it after much persuasion. When she brought it back witha long scratch on the side, Harry flipped his lid. (8)


We examined the effectiveness of stories in inducing different

degrees of emotional intensity in a norming study. Twenty-two

subjects were presented with the 24 pairs of stories with paraphrases

of the idioms' meanings replacing the idioms (e.g., "Harry is reeling

angry"). The subjects' task was to judge the degree of emotionexpressed in each story on a 7-point scale ranging from low degree of

feeling (1) to high degree of feeling (7). Analyses of variance on

subjects' ratings showed that one member of each pair of stories was

evocative of a greater degree of emotion than was the other member,

F,(l, 21) = 43.17, p < .001; fzfl , 24) - 50.05, p < .001; min F' (1,44) — 23.18, p < .01. This finding demonstrated that readers were

sensitive to the conceptual differences between the story contexts.

Having independently determined that the idioms and the story

contexts reflected different degrees of the emotion concepts, we then

examined the influence of these story contexts on readers' interpre-

tations of the appropriateness of the idioms for these discourse

situations. One idiom from each pair of items was placed in either its

original context (the context originally constructed to depict its mean-

ing) or in the context designed for its pair (new context). This yielded

48 pairs of stories in a 2 x 2 (Idiom x Context) factorial design. The

48 pairs of sentences were divided into two sets of 48 sentences. The

two sets were completely counterbalanced so that a sentence occurring

in its original context (Idiom 1-Context A or Idiom 2-Context B) in

one set occurred in a new context (Idiom 1-Context B or Idiom 2-

Context A) in the other set. Across both sets, then, there were equal

numbers of original and new pairs of idioms and story contexts. The

order of stories was randomized across the four concepts in each

counterbalanced set. Each set was presented in booklet form along

with an answer sheet for recording subjects' ratings. Table 3 is a list

of the stimuli used in this study.

Procedure, Subjects were randomly assigned to one of the two

sets of stimuli. Subjects were presented with a booklet containing the

stories and an answer sheet. They were instructed to read each story

carefully and rate how appropriate each idiom was for its context on

a 7-point scale (1 = highly inappropriate and 7 — highly appropriate).


Subjects' ratings of the idioms reflected their intuitions

about the degree to which an idiom was appropriate in a

given context. High numerical ratings indicated that subjects

thought the idiom to be highly appropriate in the given

scenario; low ratings indicated that an idiom was not appro-

priate in the given passage.

An initial ANOVA was conducted with the two counterbal-

anced sets (list), the four concepts (type of concept), the two

story contexts (A and B) and the two types of idioms (1 and

2) as independent factors. The analysis showed that list and

concept did not have any significant effect on subjects' ratings

and did not interact with the other two variables. Conse-

quently, we conducted further analyses, collapsing across

these two factors.

In Table 4 we present subjects' mean ratings across the four

conditions of the experiment. The combinations of 1A and

2B represent original pairs of idioms and contexts; the com-

binations 1B and 2A represent new pairs. The means for the

original items (5.67 and 5.72) were higher than the means for

the new items (3.58 and 4.07), respectively. Statistical analyses

of these data revealed that the main effects of idiom type and

context were not significant. However, the Idiom Type x

Context interaction was statistically reliable, fi(l, 27) —

122.47,p<.001;F2(l, 80) = 66.90,p<.001; minF' ( l , 102)

= 43.27, p < .01. ScheKe tests revealed that the means for the

Table 3

Examples of Stimuli for Experiments 3 and 4

Success

The boss has not been happy with Mr. Brown's work the last coupleof weeks. Today he was once again absent from work. If he wants tokeep his job, he shouldn't

play with fire (Appropriate)have the odds against him (Inappropriate)

Mr. Jennings' technical skills did not match up to what was requiredfor a promotion. Since another new, hotshot young engineer wasrecently hired, Jennings knew

the odds were against him (Appropriate)he was playing with fire (Inappropriate)

Anger

Jess had been looking forward to seeing this movie all week. Nowthat she was ready to enjoy the show, the loud whispering and gigglingdirectly behind her was really

getting on her nerves (Appropriate)making her flip her lid (Inappropriate)

Freddy was getting into everything all day long and he just spilled hisgrape juice all over the new rug. His mother was really trying to bepatient, but this really made her

flip her lid (Appropriate)got on her nerves (Inappropriate)

Fear

Randy and Ann saw a horror movie last night. Ann agreed to gobecause Randy loved them. He had a great time, but the sight of allthe blood and gore

made Ann's teeth chatter (Appropriate)preyed on Ann's mind (Inappropriate)

Johnny Todd had taken a big risk turning informer to the police. Thethought of what might happen to him if the mob found out

preyed on his mind (Appropriate)made his teeth chatter (Inappropriate)

Joy

When Jason didn't get a seat on flight 235 to Memphis, he was reallyupset. But when he heard that it crashed he

thanked his lucky stars (Appropriate)blew his own horn (Inappropriate)

Sally was very pleased when the boss told her she was the bestemployee he had. She's taken the praise too seriously, however,, andnow all she does is

blow her own horn (Appropriate)thank her lucky stars (Inappropriate)

original pairs 1A and 2B were significantly greater than the

means for the new pairs IB and 2A (ps < .01 for both

comparisons).

The results of this experiment supported the hypothesis that

people can reliably distinguish between idioms that have

similar meanings (i.e., that are from the same conceptual

stage) on the basis of the conceptual information reflected in

particular discourse contexts. These contexts were similar in

that they depicted the same temporal stage of a concept, but

they instantiated that information in slightly different ways.

Readers construct conceptual models of the text by mapping

the information in the discourse to their prototypical mental

representations of the concept (e.g., anger). These unique

mental models are the basis of readers' intuitions that a


Table 4Mean Appropriateness Ratings in Experiment 3

Idiom

Story context

AB

M

1

5.673.584.89

2

4.075.724.63

M

4.874.65

Note. 1 = highly inappropriate and 7 = highly appropriate.

particular idiom is appropriate to use in some contexts butnot others. This study suggests that it is the conceptual coher-ence between readers' discourse models and the meanings ofspecific idioms that gives rise to the frequent use of particularidioms in particular contexts.

Experiment 4

Experiment 3 showed that readers' judgments about theappropriate use of idioms was based on an analysis of dis-course contexts. Conceptually coherent combinations of con-texts and idioms were interpreted as being more appropriatethan conceptually less coherent combinations. In Experiment4 we examined whether the conceptual coherence of contextsand idioms influences the speed with which idioms are com-prehended. Subjects in this experiment were presented withshort scenarios ending with idiomatic phrases. Each idiomaticphrase was either conceptually appropriate for its contextidiom or conceptually inappropriate; this design was similarto the stimuli and design used in the previous study. Subjectsread each story and then made a speeded decision as towhether the phrase at the end was an acceptable Englishphrase. The speed with which each idiom was verified re-flected subjects' difficulty in comprehending these phrases,given the different conceptual information in the preceding

story context.Previous research on idiom processing has shown that

idioms are processed easily in contexts that strongly supporttheir figurative meanings (Gibbs, 1980, 1986;Kemper, 1986;Ortony, Schallert, Reynolds, & Antos, 1978; Schweigert &Moates, 1988). In these studies, the ease of idiom processingwas attributed to the conventionality of the contexts in whichthey were placed. The more conventional the context was,the easier it was to find the right schema or semantic frame-work to facilitate idiom comprehension. Our goal in thisstudy was to show that conventionality per se does not deter-mine ease of idiom comprehension. We hypothesized that theconceptual coherence between idioms and the contexts inwhich they occur directly affects the speed with which idiomsare understood. Idioms embedded in conceptually appropri-ate contexts should be verified faster than those embedded inconceptually incongruent ones. We assumed that readers mapthe specific conceptual information in discourse contexts ontomore general knowledge about different concepts (Johnson-Laird, 1983). People's mental models of the story contextsthat result from such a mapping create expectations as towhat should come next in the discourse. When an idiom isconsistent with such expectations, it should be more easilyassimilated into the mental model and consequently should

be processed more quickly than an idiom that does not fitsuch expectations. Overall, then, there should be evidence ofan interaction between type of idiom and context in subject'sspeeded responses to different idiomatic phrases.

Method

Subjects. Forty-two undergraduate students from the University

of California, Santa Cruz, participated as subjects to fulfill a course

requirement.

Stimuli and design. The 48 pairs of sentences from Experiment3, along with an equal number of control contexts, were used as

stimuli for this study. The control strings were comparable in length

and content to the experimental stimuli but had final phrases that

were semanticaUy anomalous (e.g., no sleep out it). Subjects were

expected to respond that these anomalous word strings were not

meaningful phrases in English. Two counterbalanced sets of materials

were constructed in such a way that a story appearing with a concep-

tually appropriate idiom (original pairing) in one set appeared with aconceptually inappropriate idiom (new pairing) in the other. The two

sets had equal numbers of appropriate and inappropriate stories. Each

set of 48 stories was combined with an equal number of controlitems. There were six practice items at the beginning of each set. Bach

story was followed by a simple yes/no question about some detail in

the story to ensure that subjects were following instructions to read

the stories carefully. The scenarios were equated for length, and any

differences in the length of the phrases were controlled for by the

completely counterbalanced nature of the design.

Procedure. Subjects were randomly assigned to one of the fourcounterbalanced series. The stimuli were presented in a different

random order for each subject on the cathode ray tube (CRT) of an

IBM Personal System/2 Model 30 computer system. The scenarios

were presented one line at a time on the CRT. Subjects were asked

to read each line of the story as it appeared and to press a designated

button as soon as they had understood it. When the designated key

was pressed, the next sentence of the scenario appeared, and so on.

After the comprehension response for the last line in each scenario,

a string of xs appeared on the screen for 750 ms to cue the subject

that a phrase verification response was to follow. A string of wordsthen appeared on the screen. The string was either an idiom phrase

(the target) or a control (anomalous) string of words. Subjects were

asked to read the string of words and decide as quickly as possible

whether it was an acceptable or an unacceptable phrase in the

language by pressing designated keys on the keyboard. Response

latencies were measured from the onset of the phrase to when the

subject pressed a response key. Five hundred milliseconds after such

a response, a simple yes/no question was presented, and the subjecthad to answer it by using the designated keys. The question was about

some detail in the story in order to make sure that subjects were

following instructions. They were asked to take their time in answer-

ing the question. After a response to the question, the first line of the

next scenario appeared. The experiment took about 20 min to com-

plete.


Only those scenarios followed by a correct phrase classifi-cation response were included in the analysis. Response laten-cies longer than 3,000 ms (less than 5% of all responses) weretruncated. These outliers represented cases in which experi-mental instructions could not have been followed, as whensubjects' attention wandered from the task. The mean pro-portion of correct comprehension responses was .86, indicat-ing that subjects were reading the stories carefully.


An initial ANOVA did not reveal any significant effects oflist or concept, and so we conducted further analyses, collaps-

ing across these two factors. In Table 5 we present the meanresponse times to make the phrase verification judgmentsacross the four conditions of the experiment. In accordancewith the results of Experiment 3, the conceptually coherentitems (original pairings) were responded to more quickly thanconceptually less coherent items (new pairings). Statisticalanalyses of these data revealed insignificant main effects ofboth idiom type and context. There was, however, strongevidence of the predicted Idiom x Context interaction, F,(l,

41) = 36.21, p<. 001; F2(l, 11)= 10.12, p< .01; min F'(\,18) = 7.96, p < .05. Scheffe tests indicated that the decisiontimes for the congruent idioms (1,515 for 1A and 1,511 for2B) were significantly faster than the means for the incon-gruent idiom and context pairs (1,844 for IB and 1,810 for2A; ps < .01 for both comparisons). No other comparisons

were significant.The error rates for the four conditions of the experiment

are also shown in Table 5. An analysis of variance on subjects'errors means revealed a significant Idiom x Context interac-tion, Ft(\, 41) = 31.24, p<. 001; F2(l, 11)= 7.45, p< .01;min F'(l, 17) = 6.02, p< .05. The mean proportion of errorsfor the 1A and 2B conditions was significantly less than themean proportion of errors for the IB and the 2 A conditions(Scheffe test, ps< .01 for both comparisons). The error dataparalleled the reaction time results and showed that there wasno evidence of speed-accuracy trade-offs in subjects' deci-sions.

These findings provide a more detailed understanding ofthe facilitatory effect of context on idiom processing than hasbeen shown in previous research. Readers construct mentalmodels of the discourse as they read each story by mappingthe specific information in the discourse context (e.g., "de-stroying someone's car") onto more general knowledge (thatdestruction of valuable personal property is associated with ahigh degree of anger). Idioms that best fit people's expectationswere easier to assimilate into readers' discourse models andtherefore processed more quickly than were idioms that didnot fit as well.

Experiment 5

In the previous experiments, we investigated the role thatpeople's prototypical understanding of emotion concepts hadon their use and interpretation of idioms referring to thoseconcepts. People made fine distinctions between the figurative

Table 5Mean Response Times in Experiment 4

Idiom 1

Storycontext Time"

AB

M

1,5151,8441,680

Errorrate

.06

.19

Idiom 2

Time"

1,8101,5111,661

Errorrate

.21.08

M

1,6631,677

* In milliseconds.

meanings of semantically related idioms on the basis of howeach idiom maps onto the conceptual prototype to which itcorresponds. These mappings between people's conceptual

knowledge and their understanding of idioms determine to alarge extent the contextual appropriateness of idioms. Butwhat differentiates the use of idioms with similar figurativemeanings when these phrases actually refer to the same tem-poral point of the underlying concept specified in the storycontext? For instance, blow your top and let off steam bothrefer to the same stage of the underlying concept for anger,yet these different phrases may not be equally appropriate fora given context.

One way of distinguishing between semantically relatedidioms is on the basis of how the individual components ineach expression are linked to their very specific figurativemeanings. Many idiomatic phrases are analyzable. and theirindividual parts independently contribute to the figurativemeanings of these phrases. For example, idioms such as pop

the question are semantically analyzable: question refers to amarriage proposal and pop to the act of suddenly uttering it.Similarly, in lay down the law, the noun phrase the law refersto a set of rules governing conduct, and the verb particlelaying down refers to the act of invoking those laws. Thereappear to be strong motivated links between the individualparts of idioms and their conceptual referents (e.g., betweenquestion and "marriage proposal"), which is contrary to theclassical view of idiomaticity (Fillmore, Kay, & O'Connor,1988; Gibbs & Nayak, 1989; Gibbs & O'Brien, in press;Lakoff, 1987).

The link between the parts of an idiom and its figurativemeaning can be motivated by an independent set of concep-tual metaphors that maps information from one conceptualor source domain to a target domain (Lakoff, 1987; Lakoff &Johnson, 1980). For instance, the similar meanings of let offsteam and blow your top may be motivated by the fact thatboth idioms reflect the same metaphoric mapping structureof the concept they express, namely "Anger is heat in apressurized container" (Lakoff, 1987; Lakoff & Kovecses,1983). The idiom let off steam is analyzable; steam refers toanger and lei offlo the act of releasing it. This is due to themetaphoric mapping inherent in the conceptual structure ofanger in which information from one conceptual domain(pressurized containers) is applied to a target domain (anger).A person engaging in releasing his or her anger is seen asbeing similar to a pressurized container releasing steam asexpressed in the idiom (e.g., let off steam). The expressionblow your top can be analyzed with the same metaphoricmapping structure. However, blow your top maps the explo-sive aspect of anger by referring to it in terms of the top blownoff a container under high pressure. The two idioms are thussimilar in that they share the same metaphorical mappingstructure, but different in that each reflects a slightly differentinstantiation of that mapping.

Two idioms with similar meanings need not reflect thesame metaphorical mapping structure to be semantically co-herent. For example, the similarity between blow your topand jump down your throat cannot be attributed to the waytheir individual words map onto the same conceptual meta-phor as in the earlier example. In the present case, the two

324 NANDINI P. NAVAK AND RAYMOND W. GIBBS, JR.

idioms reflect different conceptual metaphors. Blow your topexpresses anger in terms of a pressurized container whose topblows off under high pressure ("Anger is heat in a pressurizedcontainer"), whereas jump down your throat reflects the me-taphoric mapping "Angry behavior is animal behavior" byexpressing anger in terms of an angry animal that attacks byjumping at someone's throat. People's recognition that blowyour top is different from jump down your throat reflects theirability to uncover the specific metaphoric mappings reflectedin the lexical makeup of these phrases.

The purpose of Experiments 5 and 6 was to demonstratethat the contextual appropriateness of idioms is also moti-vated by conceptual metaphors. Although etymological stud-ies of idioms reveal information about their metaphoricalroots, our intent was to show that people's knowledge of themetaphorical basis for idioms affects their context-sensitiveinterpretations of these nonliteral phrases. Previous researchindicated that people's tacit knowledge of the conceptualmetaphors underlying idioms strongly constrained their men-tal images for these phrases (Gibbs & O'Brien, in press). Thusconceptual metaphors (e.g., "Mind is a container" and "Ideasare entities") form part of the link between an idiom and itsfigurative meaning (e.g., the link between spill the beans and"reveal a secret") and constrain people's understanding of theevents within their conventional images for idioms (Gibbs &O'Brien, in press; Lakoff, 1987). Spill the beans, for example,does not mean "reveal a secret" by accident, because people'stacit understanding of a metaphorical mapping between dif-ferent source and target domains motivates the reason whythis phrase means what it does. We attempted in Experiment5 and 6 to extend these earlier findings by showing thatpeople's tacit understanding of conceptual metaphors affectsthe judged appropriateness of these phrases in different dis-couse contexts.

In Experiment 5 we explored whether people consciouslyrecognize the conceptual metaphors that underlie the mean-ings of idioms. Subjects in this study were presented with alist of idioms that referred to different concepts and wereasked to identify the conceptual metaphors that helped makesense of each idiom. For example, subjects were presentedwith a list of idioms (jump down your throat, blow your stack,let off steam, climbing the walls, and bare your claws) and alist of possible conceptual metaphors ("Anger is heat in apressurized container"; "Angry behavior is animal behavior";and "Anger is insanity"). People should categorize the idiomsjump down your throat and bare your claws under the meta-phor "Angry behavior is animal behavior" because these twoidioms make sense in terms of this conceptual metaphor; thatis, readers' conceptual knowledge of the source domain ofanimals (i.e., that animals "bare claws" and "jump downpeople's throats") and of the conceptual metaphor (i.e., thatanimal behavior can be mapped onto angry behavior) allowsthem to link the words in an idiom to its figurative meanings(i.e., "get angry"). We expected that subjects would be capableof matching idioms with their appropriate conceptual meta-phors when presented with a variety of figurative phrases thatreferred to different emotion concepts. This result would notbe consistent with the traditional view that idioms are deadmetaphors and that people should have little insight into themetaphorical basis of common idiomatic phrases.

Method

Subjects. Thirty-eight undergraduate students from the Univer-sity of California, Santa Cruz, participated as subjects to fulfill a

course requirement.

Stimuli and design. Two conceptual metaphors that structured

each of the domains of anger, fear, success, and failure were chosen

from Lakoff and Kovecses's (1983) examples. These are listed as

follows:

Anger is like pressure in a hot container.Anger is like a ferocious animal.Success is up.Success is like a completed journey.Failure is like an incomplete journey.Failure is like consuming something inedible.Fear is like escape.Fear is a physical change.

Four idioms were chosen for each conceptual metaphor on the basis

of whether the words in each idiom were associated with the source

domain in the metaphor. For example, jump down your throat, raise

your hackles, and bare your daws are all made up of words associated

with the domain of animal behavior (the source domain in the conceptual

metaphor "Angry behavior is animal behavior"). There were a total of

64 idioms, and each phrase mapping was reflected by one of eight

conceptual metaphors. The list of metaphoric mappings and idioms were

randomly presented together in a booklet, along with instructions andan answer sheet. Table 6 is a partial list of the stimuli used in this

experiment.Procedure. Each subject was presented with the prepared booklet

and was asked to read each phrase carefully and understand what it

meant. Subjects then identified the metaphor that made each idiomunderstandable (i.e., "Identify the metaphor that meaningfully relates

the words in the idiom to its figurative meaning"). The instructions

emphasized that subjects were not to make their judgments on the basis

of the literal similarity between the words in the idioms and the linguistic

descriptions of the conceptual metaphors. The experiment took about

25 min to complete.


The number of idioms categorized under each conceptualmetaphor was determined for each subject. Correct categori-zations were those in which subjects saw idioms as reflectingthe source domains of the conceptual metaphor (e.g., bareyour claws, jump down your throat, and raise your hackles forthe conceptual metaphor "Angry behavior is animal behav-ior"). The proportions of correct categorization responses arepresented in Table 7. The obtained proportion of correctcategorization responses was significantly greater than chance(.50) for all eight source domains (p < .01 on a two-tailed testfor all comparisons). These results indicated that subjectsagreed on the specific conceptual metaphor by which a par-ticular idiom was structured. The data do not support theidea that idioms are simple dead metaphors and that peoplehave little understanding of the metaphorical roots of thesephrases.

Experiment 6

Experiments 3 and 4 showed that readers differentiatebetween idioms with similar meanings (i.e., that refer to thesame temporal stage of a concept) on the basis of the specificconceptual information depicted in the contexts in whichidioms occur. There are some idioms, however, that not only


Table 6

Examples of Stimuli for Experiments 5 and 6

Anger

Anger is like a ferocious animalMrs. Simmons is a bear about cleanliness. Her house is alwayssparkling clean. She's always prowling around the house with aduster in her hand. She attacks every spot of dust like a personalenemy. It's not easy on her kids. She watches them like a hawk tosee whether they make a mess. The moment they become a littlecareless, she

bites their heads off (Appropriate)blows her top (Inappropriate)

Anger is like heat in a pressurized containerMrs. Simmons is a stickler for cleanliness. She is always very tensewhen she is cleaning her house. It makes her fume when her familydoes not cooperate. She gets hot every time she finds another dustyspot. The pressure really builds up when she is cleaning her kids'rooms. Her tolerance of their untidiness really reaches its limits.And when they walk in carelessly with muddy feet, she

Mows her top (Appropriate)bites their heads off (Inappropriate)

Success

Success is like a completed journeyPat Turner is a man of action who always reaches his goal. He canreally get the ball rolling when things get difficult. Just last week hebegan procedures to set a new bill in motion. He mobilized all theresources at his disposal. He got the government to move quicklyon the issues he was raising. A decision was reached within 48hours to pass the bill. As usual Pat has sailed on troubled watersand as always he

has come through (Appropriate)is on cloud nine (Inappropriate)

Success is upPat Turner is a man who likes a challenge. He is ready to surmountthe greatest difficulties. Just last week he began procedures to putup a new resolution. He had to climb his way over the opposition.He got the government to think highly of the issues he was raising.It was an uphill battle but finally the resolution was reached. Asusual Pat has set his mind on high goals and now he

is on cloud nine (Appropriate)has come through (Inappropriate)

Fear

Fear is like escapeLisa had married Tad to escape from her alcoholic father. She hadreally needed a break from the violent scenes at home. Lisa feltlike a fugitive from her family. She had run away with Tad withouther father's knowledge. She had slipped out late at night and fled.She finally felt free and safe in Tad's little apartment The suddenloud and angry sound of her father's voice made her

shake in her shoes (Inappropriate)jump out of her skin (Appropriate)

Fear is like a physical changeLisa had run away on a cold, winter night to marry Tad, She hadreally needed a break from her bleak existence at home. Sheshuddered to think of what her father would say when he foundout. His icy disapproval would make her tremble: His cold angerwould make a chill run down her spine. The thought of her father'sangry voice made her

shake in her shoes (Appropriate)jump out of her skin (Inappropriate)

Failure

Failure is like an incomplete journeyBeth was well on her way to becoming a partner in her law firm.She has successfully navigated through some difficult cases. Herfinal venture was going to be the O'Grady murder case. Bethmobilized the legal machinery was into full swing. She worked atfull steam preparing her arguments. But at the last minute, one ofher key witnesses refused to go along with her. Beth had to put abrake on her plans. She was very disappointed, she really had to

put a spoke in her wheel (Appropriate)eat her words (Inappropriate)

Failure is like consuming something inedibleBeth bragged about how she would become a partner in her lawfirm. She was consumed by the desire to get ahead. Her finalventure was going to be the O'Grady murder case. Beth chewedher nails in anticipation of the day of the trial. She mouthed offabout her planned strategy for hours on end. But at the last minute,one of her key witnesses refused to open his mouth, and Beth hadto

eat her words (Appropriate)put a spoke in her wheel (Inappropriate)

are similar in terms of the broad temporal stage of a concept

to which they refer but also appear to be similar in terms of

the degree of emotion they express. For example, the idioms

blow your top and jump down your throat both express ex-

treme degrees of anger, as demonstrated by their usage in the

following context:

When Billy told his father he had totaled his new Porsche, hisfather

blew his topjumped down his throat (9)

Table 7

Proportion of Correct Categorization Responses in

Experiment 5

Metaphor type

Idiom Anger Fear Success Failure

12

.83*

.60*.87*.84*

.74*

.77*.61*.81*

Both idioms appear to be equally appropriate in the given

context because the context depicts a level of angry behavior

that is reflected equally well in both phrases. The main

difference between these two idioms appears to be the different

lexical structures that each has to map separate conceptual

metaphors. For example, the figurative meaning of jumped

down his throat makes sense because readers can link the

lexical items inthis phrase to the conceptual 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 of blew

his top through the conceptual metaphor "Anger is heat in a

pressurized container" because a person shouting angrily has

the same explosive effect as does the top of a container

blowing open under pressure.

Our aim in Experiment 6 was to examine whether readers use

the metaphoric information in the lexical makeup of idioms

when determining their applicability to different discourse

contexts. Although subjects in Experiment 5 could con-

sciously identify the conceptual metaphors underlying the


figurative meanings of idioms, this does not mean that peoplenormally assess the conceptual metaphors underlying idiomswhen interpreting these phrases in discourse. We hypothesizedthat contexts provide information about specific metaphoricmappings that cue readers to the specific figurative meaningsof idioms.

Subjects in this experiment were presented with short sce-narios about a particular emotion concept that were con-structed to prime one of the metaphorical mappings inherentin its prototypical structure. Consider the following example:

Mary was very tense about this evening's dinner party. The factthat Bob had not come home to help was making her fume. Shewas getting hotter with every passing minute. Dinner would notbe ready before the guests arrived. As it got closer to five o'clockthe pressure was really building up. Mary's tolerance was reachingits limits. When Bob strolled in at ten minutes to five whistlingand smiling, Mary

blew her topbit his head off (10)

The story was written to prime the metaphorical mapping"Anger is heat in a pressurized container" by depicting Mary'sincreasing anger in terms of increasing pressure and heat. Theuse of phrases such as very tense, making her fume, getting

hotter, the pressure was really building up, and reaching itslimits are specific references to this mapping. Subjects wereasked to rate the appropriateness of each idiom ending forthe given scenario. If subjects accessed the metaphoric map-ping reflected in an idiom's lexical structure, they wouldinterpret blew her top as being more appropriate than bit hishead off even though both phrases are grammatically andconceptually (at the same stage of the prototype) appropriatefor the given scenario. Readers' understanding of the storycontext should make it easier for them to recognize an idiomthat reflects a similar conceptual idea (e.g., "Anger is heat ina pressurized container"). The following scenario primes adifferent conceptual metaphor, "Angry behavior is animalbehavior," and should result in different expectations:

Mary was getting very grouchy about this evening's dinner party.She prowled around the house waiting for Bob to come home tohelp. She was growling under her breath about Bob's lateness.Her mood was becoming more savage with every passing minute.As it got closer to five o'clock Mary was ferociously angry withBob. When Bob strolled in at 4:30 whistling and smiling, Mary

bit his head offblew her top (11)

In this case, bit his head off appears to be more appropriatethan in the earlier contexts because the mental model isstructured according to the metaphor "Angry behavior isanimal behavior." This suggests that idioms must reflect thesame metaphorical mapping information as its context to beconsidered most appropriate. Our prediction was that readerswould find idioms embedded in contexts matched for meta-phorical information easier to interpret than idioms in con-texts depicting different kinds of conceptual metaphors. Over-all, we expected evidence of an interaction between the typeof idiom and the type of metaphor context in subjects' ratings.

An alternative explanation for these context effects wouldbe that idioms are judged appropriate in some contexts andnot in others because of the particular social contexts to whichthey have been conventionally associated. In Examples 10

and 11, the social contexts were the same (i.e., preparationfor a dinner party). If readers' intuitions about the appropriateuse of idioms were based on particular idioms' being associ-ated with particular social contexts, then both blow your lop

and jump down your throat should have been perceived asequally appropriate for the dinner party situation. Readers'intuitions that the two idioms are not equally appropriatewould imply that the conceptual information in each contextis more crucial than the information about the social contextper se. We included social context as an independent factorin this experiment to test for the possibility of some interactionbetween the metaphoric priming in a particular discoursecontext with the social situation depicted.

Method

Subjects. Twenty-seven undergraduate students from the Univer-

sity of California, Santa Cruz, participated in this experiment.

Stimuli and design. Four idioms for each of the concepts of

anger, fear, success, and failure were chosen. Idioms for each concept

were organized into pairs; members of each pair referred to the same

temporal stage of a concept and were equally appropriate in contextsthat encoded the same degree of emotion. Members of each pair were

thus different only in that their lexical makeup reflected different

metaphoric mappings (e.g., blow your lop reflected "Anger is heat ina pressurized container," and jump down your throat reflected "Angry

behavior is animal behavior"). The metaphorical mappings used were

the same for each concept as in Experiment 5.

To prime the specific metaphoric mapping reflected in a givenidiom, we constructed story contexts by using lexical items from the

source domain of the metaphorical mapping. For example, a story

written to prime the metaphor "Angry behavior is animal behavior"

contained phrases that alluded to animal behavior, whereas a storywritten to prime the metaphor "Anger is heat in a pressurized

container" contained allusions to pressurized containers. Care was

taken to avoid using words in a story context that might lexically

prime recognition of the words in the idiom that followed. None ofthe contexts included terms that were semantically related to the

words in the idiom. For example, a context that primed the concep-

tual metaphor "Angry behavior is animal behavior" did not contain

words related to the lexical makeup of jump down your throat. Instead,the contexts explicitly primed the conceptual metaphors that related

an idiom to its figurative meaning by presenting angry behavior as

animal behavior (e.g., "Greg was in a beastly mood").

There were two contexts of each idiom depicting different socialsituations (Situation 1 and Situation 2). Each story context was then

paired with both an idiom reflecting the same metaphoric mapping

as in the story (original metaphoric context) and an idiom reflecting

a different conceptual metaphor (new metaphoric context), which

resulted in 32 pairs of sentences. One story context of each pair wasassigned to each of the two levels of the metaphoric context factor,

and one idiom of each pair was assigned to each of the two levels ofthe idiom type factor. The two social situations for each idiom were

also assigned to the two levels of the social context factor, which

resulted in a 2 x 2 x 2 (Idiom x Metaphoric Context x SocialContext) factorial design. The 32 paiis of sentences were divided into

four sets of 16 sentences. The four sets were completely counterbal-

anced in such a way that an idiom occurring with an originalmetaphoric context in one set occurred with a new context in theother, and there were equal numbers of original and new pairings in

each set. Furthermore, if a particular social situation was used inconjunction with a particular metaphoric mapping in one set, it wasused with a different metaphoric mapping in the other. The order of


stories was randomized across the four concepts (anger, fear, success,and failure) in each counterbalanced set. Each set was presented in

booklet form along with an answer sheet for recording subjects'

ratings.

Procedure. Subjects were randomly assigned to one of the foursets of stimuli. They were presented with a booklet containing the

scenarios and an answer sheet. They were instructed to read each

scenario carefully and rate, on a 7-point scale, how appropriate eachidiom ending was for its scenario (1 = highly inappropriate and 7 =

highly appropriate). They were asked to enter their rating for each

item on the answer sheet.

Table 9Mean Appropriateness Ratings Across Concepts in

Experiment 6

Concept Rating

AngerFearSuccessFailure

5.605.154.663.47

Note. 1 «= highly inappropriate and 7 — highly appropriate.


An initial analysis was conducted with idiom, metaphoriccontext, social context, list, and concept as independent vari-ables. There were no main effects or interactions evident withrespect to social context or list. We conducted further anal-yses, collapsing across these factors. In Table 8 we present themean ratings across the four conditions generated by crossingthe type of idiom with the type of metaphoric context. The

combination of Al and B2 represented original (or concep-tually consistent) pairs, and the combination A2 and Blrepresented new (or conceptually inconsistent) pairs. An AN-OVA on these data revealed a significant Metaphor x Idiominteraction, F,(\, 26) = 18.00, p < .001; F2(\, 48) = 11.52,p < .001; min F'(l, 74) = 7.02, p < .01. Scheffe tests on theindividual means showed that the mean ratings for the originalpairs were significantly higher than the mean ratings for thenew pairs (ps < .01 for both comparisons).

The ANOVA also revealed a significant main effect of concepttype, F,(3, 78) = 31.22, p < .001; F2(3, 48) = 11.027, p <

.001; min F'(3, 82) = 8.15, p < .01. In Table 9 we presentthe mean ratings across the four concepts. The anger and fearitems had significantly higher ratings than did the success andfailure items. However, the absence of a three-way interactionof concept, idiom, and metaphoric context eliminated thepossibility that some of these concepts were not metaphori-cally structured. The differences found between concepts maybe due to the fact that anger and fear are relatively moredifferentiated in our conceptual structures than are other typesof conceptual concepts (Lakoff, 1987).

The results of this experiment showed that the metaphoricmappings underlying idiomatic phrases affected subjects'interpretation of the meanings and appropriate use of thesefigurative expressions. Subjects were sensitive to the congru-ence between the metaphoric information in idioms andcontexts. Readers' intuitions that idioms reflecting the samemetaphoric mapping were most appropriate in contexts prim-

Table 8Mean Appropriateness Ratings in Experiment 6

Idiom

Metaphoric context

M

4.924.184.55

4.32 4.625.45 4.814.88 —

Note. [ = highly inappropriate and 7 = highly appropriate.

ing the same mapping (when social, temporal, and emotional

intensity were controlled) suggests that idioms are not deadmetaphors, as traditionally assumed. Instead, people can usethe information about the conceptual metaphors underlyingidiomatic phrases to make sense of these expressions. Thefinding that social context did not have a significant effectfurther strengthens this assertion because the contexts per sedid not determine the contextual appropriateness of idioms,as traditional theories would predict. It appears that it is themapping of the conceptual information in discourse contextsonto people's knowledge about conceptual metaphors thatdetermines readers' intuitions about the appropriate use ofidioms.

General Discussion

The goal of these studies has been to explore the influenceof conceptual knowledge on people's interpretation of idiomsin varying discourse contexts. We originally observed thatthere are many idioms in English that express similar figura-tive meanings. For instance, flip your lid, get hot under the

collar, hit the roof, and blow your stack all refer to the idea"get angry." Various idiom and slang dictionaries list dozensof phrases that each refer to concepts of "getting angry,""revealing secrets," "being fearful," "dying," and so on (seeUrdang, Hunsinger, & LaRoche, 1987).

Why are there so many idioms with similar nonliteralinterpretations? Traditional theories of idiomaticity have notaddressed this question and generally propose that the mean-ings of idioms are arbitrarily defined and represented as simplesemantic configurations wherein each phrase has stipulated asimple figurative meaning (e.g., hit the roof means "get an-gry"). Thus there is no reason why blow your stack, flip your

lid, or hit the roof all refer to the concept of anger. It is just ahistorical accident, or a matter of convention of usage (Mor-gan, 1978), that there are different phrases meaning "getangry." Speakers might use some of these phrases more fre-quently in some contexts than in others. But the contextualappropriateness of idioms is a matter of convention and notmotivated by the specific relation between an idiom and theconceptual content of a discourse situation.

Our hypothesis was that people can reliably distinguishbetween semantically related idioms because of their concep-tual knowledge of the domains to which idioms refer. Wehave examined this idea by looking at people's interpretationsof idioms referring to emotion concepts such as anger, fear,success, and joy. Although there is continuing debate aboutthe necessity of embracing a prototype approach to emotion


concepts (Ortony, Clore, & Foss, 1987), the results of previousresearch led us to assume that many concepts can be tempo-rally structured as prototypes. The results of six experimentsindicated that people's understanding of idioms in differentcontexts is based on the structural properties of concepts.Experiment 1 showed that readers can distinguish betweenidioms that refer to the same concept on the basis of thatconcept's temporal structure. In Experiment 2 we demon-strated that idioms used in a prototypical temporal sequencewere viewed as being more meaningful than when the tem-poral sequence was violated. Experiment 3 indicated thatidioms with similar meanings (corresponding to the samestage of a prototype) were judged as being differentially ap-

propriate, depending on the specific conceptual content ofthe discourse in which idioms were read. In Experiment 4 wedemonstrated that idioms embedded in conceptually con-gruent contexts were easier to process than idioms embeddedin conceptually less congruent ones. Experiment 5 revealedthat readers can reliably identify the specific conceptual met-aphors that link an idiom to its figurative meaning. Finally,the results from Experiment 6 showed that readers'judgmentsabout the appropriate use of idioms were influenced by thecoherence between the metaphoric information depicted in adiscourse context and the conceptual metaphor reflected inthe lexical makeup of an idiom.

Together, these studies show that people's understanding ofidioms is constrained by their conceptual knowledge of thedomains to which idioms refer. Idioms are not discretelyrepresented in the mental lexicon in such a way that thefigurative meaning of each phrase is arbitrarily linked to eachidiomatic word string. Instead, idioms whose meanings aregenerated from the same conceptual metaphor may be linkedtogether in a temporal sequence as part of a semantic field foreach type of conceptual referent (anger, fear, joy, etc.). Forexample, there are numerous idioms referring to the conceptof anger. Each of these phrases are systematically related inthe same semantic field to different conceptual metaphors(e.g., "Anger is heat in a pressurized container"; "Angrybehavior is a ferocious animal"; "Anger is insanity"). Thissystematic mapping is due to people's understanding of cer-tain aspects of emotion concepts in terms of familiar, con-crete, and well-structured concepts such as heat and animals.These conceptual metaphors provide more than a simple wayof talking about the ontology of anger, fear, sorrow, and joy;they are used to understand and perhaps create our conceptualknowledge of these abstract and less well-structured concepts.

The fact that people conceptualize emotion conceptsthrough different conceptual metaphors explains why thereare so many different idioms with similar figurative meanings.Within each metaphorical mapping of a source domain (e.g.,heat in a pressurized container) and a target domain (e.g.,anger), there are different stages of the prototype that arisefrom that mapping. For instance, the early stages of provokinganger directly correspond to the earlier stages of a fluid heatingin a container, as can be seen in idioms such as kindle yourire. Later stages in which the fluid boils over and explodesout of the container correspond to later stages of angrybehavior, as reflected in idioms such as blow your stack or flip

your lid. People's knowledge of these metaphorical links be-

tween different source and target domains provides the basisfor the appropriate use and interpretation of idioms. Dis-course contexts encode various kinds of conceptual content,and people view idiomatic phrases as being more or lessappropriate for these contexts, depending on the correspond-ence between the conceptual underpinning of an idiom andthe conceptual content of the context. Thus readers interpretidioms such as blow your slack to be more appropriate to usewhen a person's anger is characterized in terms of the concep-tual metaphor "Anger is heat in a pressurized container."More subtle distinctions between idioms referring to the sameconceptual metaphor can be made on the basis of which stageof the conceptual prototype an idiom refers to. This knowl-edge of the internal structure of a prototype influences peo-ple's context-sensitive interpretation of idiomatic phrases.

People's prototypical knowledge of complex concepts par-tially explains why speakers view many idioms as havingcomplex meaning. For instance, both do a slow burn and flip

your lid denote the idea of being angry. But each phrase hasa slightly different sense because they refer to different partsof the prototype for the concept of anger. Traditional theoriesof idiomaticity have not acknowledged that idioms mighthave complex semantic configurations. However, not only doour findings demonstrate that idioms with similar figurativemeanings can be differentiated; the data also provide a prin-cipled account for why such idioms differ in the exact waysthey do. In general, it is clear that the pragmatic conditionsof use for idioms are not arbitrary or strictly a matter ofconvention, but they can be directly motivated by people'sunderstanding of the conceptual structures underlying idiomsand people's conceptualizations of the events and concepts indifferent discourse situations.

Our results, along with those of Gibbs and O'Brien (inpress), cast additional doubt on the traditional assertion thatidioms are dead metaphors. People recognized the conceptualmetaphors underlying the meanings of idioms and judgedcertain idioms as being more contextually appropriate whenthe metaphorical descriptions of a concept in a discoursesituation matched the metaphorical basis for an idiom. Al-though conceptual metaphors may not be instantiated everytime readers understand idioms, they provide an additionalsource of information that people can use to make sense ofidioms and to judge when it is appropriate to use an idiom ina particular discourse context. Idiomatic phrases are oftenjudged as being especially apt in poetry because they illustratea specific instantiation of some conceptual metaphor thatmay be the theme of a poem (e.g., "Life is a Journey"; Lakoff& Turner, 1989). Furthermore, the metaphorical basis ofidioms accounts for the syntactic behavior of idioms (Gibbs& Gonzales, 1985; Gibbs & Nayak, 1989; Lakoff, 1987). Thefact that speakers know that lid in flip your lid has a referentin both a source domain (the lid of a pressurized container)and a target domain ("Anger is heat in a pressurized con-tainer") provides one reason why people understand,/?/? yourlid as being analyzable and syntactically productive.

Some critics have argued that if there is a conceptualmapping between a source domain and a target domain suchas "Anger is heat in a pressurized container," then peopleshould be able to create new idioms on the basis of this


mapping besides the ones that already exist (flip your lid,blow your stack, let off steam, etc.; Ortony, 1988). The factthat such sensible metaphoric combinations such as blow yourlid or flip your stack do not exist suggests to some that thesystematicity in idioms lies at the lexical, not conceptual, level(Ortony, 1988). This argument is problematic because peopleoften view lexically changed idioms as retaining their figura-tive meanings (Gibbs, Nayak, Bolton, & Keppel, 1989). Forexample, people do not believe that changing flip your lid toflip your top severely disrupts the meaning of an idiom. Justbecause some of these new idioms are not currently prevalentin the language does not mean that they are meaningless.Moreover, when two idioms are blended together to form anovel expression, they most often make sense when the orig-inal expressions are generated from the same conceptualmetaphor. For instance, blow a gasket and raise the roof arestructured by the same conceptual metaphor "Anger is heatin a pressurized container" and can be meaningfully com-bined to get blow the roof and raise a gasket. People's intui-tions about the meaningfulness of these novel idioms supportsthe view that conceptual metaphors exist independently inour conceptual systems and underlie many aspects of ourthinking, reasoning, and imagination (Lakoff, 1987).

It is important to emphasize the generality of our findingsacross different conceptual domains. Even though conceptsare differentially well structured, our empirical results wereconsistent for groups of idioms referring to different concepts.This consistency suggests that our account of idiomaticity isnot limited to only a few kinds of idioms or to only a fewconcepts. However, different concepts are associated withdifferent numbers of idioms, and this makes it difficult tosystematically investigate in the same experiment the jointeffect of conceptual prototypes and conceptual metaphors onidiom interpretation (i.e., idioms do not exist for all levels ofthe prototypes resulting from different conceptual meta-phors). Our account of idiomaticity does not depend on orpredict, there always being a specific idiom for each level of aconceptual metaphor. Our point is simply that many idiomsdo correspond to different aspects of the conceptual structuresfor various kinds of concepts.

Our findings that the use and understanding of idioms arepartially constrained by people's conceptual knowledge doesnot imply that the meanings of idioms should be predictable(Lakoff, 1987). After all, as we have mentioned, there areimportant linguistic conventions that determine the creationand use of idioms. But the meanings of many idioms can bemotivated so that an idiom's figurative meaning makes sense.Although we do not predict that there should be beans asopposed to peas in spill the beans, the use of beans makessense because beans are hard to retrieve once spilled andbecause the conceptual metaphors "Mind is a container" and"Ideas are entities" provide a sensible link between one'sknowledge of spilling beans and the idea of revealing secrets.It may simply be a convention of the language that speakersuse beans rather than peas to talk about revealing secrets.Furthermore, even when people do not know the origins ofan idiom, they can still make sense of the expression throughtheir conceptual understanding of the referent domain. Shothis wad, for example, comes from an obscure reference to

19th century musketry. Even though few speakers know this

etymology, they are still capable of recognizing that shot hiswad corresponds to a particular stage of a prototype for theconcept of expending resources and thus might be moreappropriate to use in some contexts rather than others.

It is also clear that the analysis of idioms that we havesuggested does not account for other aspects of idiomaticlanguage use. Although many idioms are transparent and canreadily be seen as corresponding to certain conceptual infor-mation (e.g., blow your stack), other idioms have opaquemetaphorical roots (e.g., trip the light fantastic), and peopleare unlikely to recognize why these idioms mean what theydo. A similar continuum between transparent and opaqueitems has been convincingly demonstrated for denominalverbs by E. Clark and Clark (1979). For instance, it is relativelyeasy to see the reason for some fresh innovations, such as toporch, whereas few people recognize why opaque expressionssuch as to boycott mean what they do. In general, the trans-parency of an idiom is very much a matter of degree: Moretransparent phrases are most easily tied to people's conceptualknowledge. There also exists a class of extragrammaticalidioms with missing verbs and nouns, such as first off, all of

a sudden, by and large, so far so good, and so on, that are notparticularly amenable to a conceptual analysis. These pointsabout the diversity of idioms do not detract from our mainmessage that a good deal of idiomatic language use can beexplained in terms of people's conceptual knowledge and notsimply in terms of arbitrary, pragmatic conventions of use.

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gibbs - conceptual knowledge - zapravo contextual appropr

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