Metaphorically Speaking: Conversational Behavioural Patterns in the use of Linguistic Metaphors

Abstract:

While abundant studies have examined cognitive efforts required for metaphor comprehension, what happens during metaphor production remains underexplored. Based on 19 triadic conversations produced by 57 participants, this paper examines conversational behaviours associated with the use of metaphors and deliberate metaphors in particular. The data includes 2,631 conversational turns, of which 690 contained metaphors and 45 had deliberate metaphors. Four conversational behaviours were examined: turn duration, within-turn pause duration, between-turn gap duration, and co-speech gestures. Compared with turns without metaphors, those with metaphors lasted significantly longer and were more likely to co-occur with gestures, whereas differences in within-turn pause and between-turn gaps were not significant. The results suggest that metaphor production involves more cognitive efforts or a stronger awareness of the ongoing communication; however, metaphor processing by the listener does not necessarily take more time. The effect of metaphor deliberateness was not significant in any of the conversational behaviours.

Research areas:

• Dialogue
• DivCon

Year:

2026

Type of Publication:

Article

Journal:

Review of Cognitive Linguistics

Note:

to appear