Processing unfamiliar metaphors in a self-paced reading task

In 2 self-paced reading experiments, we investigate the processing characteristics of unfamiliar metaphorical subject–predicate structures. The literal first hypothesis pre-dicts that processing metaphorical expressions of the type “an x is a y ” will proceed more slowly than in the case of literal statements of the same type. This prediction is confirmed: At the position of the metaphorical term, reaction times were indeed higher for the metaphorical conditions than for the literal ones. This result was ob-tained both without (Experiment 1) and with a supportive context sentence (Experi-ment 2). In Experiment 2, a distinction also emerges between apt and nonapt in-stances, such that reaction times for apt metaphors are no longer significantly higher toward the end of the clause containing them. This suggests that, when embedded in a rich context, the interpretation of unfamiliar apt metaphors can be completed by the end of a fragment that can serve as a clause. The model that has probably had the strongest effect on the literature concerning the time course involved in processing metaphorical language starts from the so-called literal first hypothesis, which observes that the interpretation of meta-phors needs to pass through a stage in which the literal meaning of an utterance is processed before its figurative meaning can be computed. The hypothesis is derived from a stage model of metaphor comprehension that originated in contemporary philosophy of language. In their semantic theories, scholars like Searle (1979) and Grice (1975) distinguished between sentence meaning and utterance or speaker’s meaning, reflecting the distinction between what is said through an utterance (i.e., the conventional, literal meanings of words and how they are syntactically com-bined) and the ulterior meaning the speaker wishes to express, which can only b