Vision Science and Eye

Biography

Biography: Xianglan Chen

Abstract

Cognitive theories of metonymy understanding are typically described in terms of the mappings between two domains of abstract, schematic, disembodied knowledge. Some researches proposed that understanding metaphorical expressions is a process of building a simulation that is fundamentally embodied in being constrained by past and present bodily experiences. However, few empirical studies address how context affects metonymy processing in English, and even fewer do so in other languages. The present study uses eye-tracking experimentation to explore Chinese metonymy processing, focusing on how the contextual information of both the preceding target words and the immediate spillover after the target words affects metonymic processing based on whether the logical relationship between the preceding contextual information and the target word is strong or weak (a 2×2 between-subject experiment with target words of literal/metonymy and logic of strong/weak). Results show that readers take longer to arrive at a literal interpretation than at a metonymic interpretation when the preceding information is in a weak logic relationship with target words, although this disparity can disappear when the logic is strong. Another finding is that both the preceding and the spillover contextual information contribute to Chinese metonymy processing when the spillover information does more to the metonymy than it does to the literal meaning. This study further supports Grice’s theory of pragmatic reasoning and develops additional information on how the components of sentences contribute to the metonymic processing of target words. Based on an experiment, a contextual model of Chinese metonymy processing is proposed.

Keywords: Metonymy processing, Embodied cognition, Preceding contextual information, Eye tracking, Spillover contextual information.