Metaphors, especially words and phrases through which an item is projected against another to bring about a certain degree of meaning and association between apparently different concepts, have, over time, elicited interest from both linguists and cognitive scientists (Morsanyi et al., 2020, p. 100925). The process of metaphoric comprehension has often raised the question of how the human mind makes figurative meaning. Prominent figures in cognitive linguistics, Robyn Carston and D. Wilson, have put forward entirely independent theoretical approaches to metaphor processing, each suggesting the existence of two major routes during the process: an indirect route and a direct route.
These contribute significantly to understanding the cognitive processes involved in experience metaphor, describing how people process and make sense of these subtly inflected forms of language (Mao et al., 2022, p. 43). They are marked by a clear recognition that metaphors are much more than ornamental speech. They rise above this much shallower description, becoming the medium through which abstract thought is articulated.
Direct route models, as predicted by Carston, have iterated that symbolic meanings flow directly from the immediate access of contextual information and pragmatic inferences. According to such a stance, in the presence of a metaphor, one refers to knowledge of the linguistic context and social-cultural conventions for understanding. This implies an almost immediate integration of cues, which would allow for metaphors to be comprehended without any or, to be more precise, little cognitive exertion. Carston insists that context contributes extensively to interpretive guidance, as she proposes listeners’ use of pragmatic reasoning in filling in the sense of what the speaker says in any given discourse situation. On his part, the indirect route put forward by Wilson opines metaphor understanding might result from a more profound intellectual operation listeners conduct, given that they involve explicit conceptual mapping and cognitive elaboration (Ge et al., 2023, p. 1895). In cognitive terms, therefore, understanding this mode of expression entails activating an overall mental model that captures a reconciliation of the meanings present both within the literal sense of the expressions used and the implied figurative meaning. Wilson starts developing his account for cognitive agents by identifying general mental resources involved in processes of this kind, which may include analogy-making and conceptual integration by blending to fill the semantic distances between figurative and literal loci.
Even though Carston and Wilson disagree concerning the mechanisms underlying metaphor comprehension, they both indicate how cognitive processing is dynamic and bound to the complexions of linguistic meaning and its uses. The theories they propose illuminate one’s way of navigating metaphorical speech and reveal to scholars the enormous contribution that linguistic structure, cognitive processing strategies, and pragmatic context make to constructing meaning.
In sum, the Review of the theoretical solutions by Carston and Wilson for processing metaphors in utterances reveals how complex human thought processes and comprehension of spoken words go. Through such explanations of direct and indirect pathways to metaphoric meaning, they provide more profound knowledge about how meaning is drawn from linguistic expressions by people, thereby opening the horizons for understanding the cognitive bases of communication.
Robyn Cartson’s Views
Robyn Carston’s arguments with the possible existence of two routes to metaphor processing sensitize a nuanced understanding of how people comprehend and interpret the figural use of their language. EssentialThe direct and indirect routes are essential to her framework, each serving a different purpose in the cognitive workings involving metaphors (Carston, 2010, p. 321). They have a fundamental problematic requirement: a metaphor theory must consider the confounding influences on the understanding of metaphorical expression supplied by the intricate interplay of linguistic form and pragmatic context and cognitive inference involved.
Carston’s direct route to metaphor processing would “rely on the ability of the addressee both to access relevant context for metaphor comprehension immediately and to make immediate pragmatic inferences that lead them to recover the speaker’s intended meaning of the metaphor, i.e., to generate a set of interpretive effects .”This route depends on the abilities of the listener, who can call up her knowledge of the linguistic context, such as social and cultural conventions necessary to make comprehension fluent, i.e., not slow him down with a host of questions to uncover the loci of These scholars argue that people can fill in the pragmatic blanks quickly, drawing on contextual clues to work out what meaning the speaker is trying to convey in a given speech event (Carston & Wearing, 2011, p. 312). Context also provides interpretation for Carston, yet she believes that listeners use their intuition to bring together various contexts subliminally to understand the real message laid out in a metaphor.
On the other hand, Carston clarifies a much more indirect way to process metaphor, like the necessarily fuller cognitive process implicated by conceptual mapping and mental enrichment. That raises the possibility that the insight into the metaphor-making process goes in quite a different way—namely, that the hearer has to build up or construct a mental model that reconciles literal meaning with the intake of intentional information. Carston even says that the listener may reason analogically and conceptually integrate indirectly to fill the gap that the established frame of reference reveals between the exact domains (Wilson & Carston, 2007, p. 259). In this other indirect path, one is confronted with the costlier resource mode of cognitive orientation in which an individual makes a more effortful mental endeavor to construe the conceptual mapping underlying the metaphor.
However, this is made by Carston to be critical for fully appreciating the complexity of operations that individuals may undertake when processing metaphors in use and meaning. While the direct route, according to the author, gives more attention to pragmatic inference besides contextual cues that help receivers rapidly understand, in contrast, the indirect route draws attention to cognitive depth represented in unpackaging underlying conceptual mappings in metaphors. By acknowledging both routes, Carston hopes to create a more balanced model of metaphor understanding that can accommodate the dynamic interplay of linguistic structure, pragmatic context, and cognitive processes.
Carston implies that the ability to discern the direct from the one taken indirectly is central to why people vary in their understanding of metaphors across linguistic contexts and individual cognitive profiles (Holyoak & Stamenkovic, 2018, p. 641). She argues one route may be more highly weighted than the other due to individual differences in the relative proficiency of the language users, cognitive style differences, and signal constraints. Carston then suggests that this model of metaphor comprehension recognizes the multi-faceted nature of strategies employed by speakers in making sense of figurative language.
Robyn Carston argues that there are two routes to metaphor processing—direct and pragmatic. By positing direct and indirect routes to understanding, Carston places the responsibility on theories aiming to explain how different uses of such expressions might be deployed in dynamically motivated contexts where both rapid pragmatic reason and complex propositional attitude attributions should. Her structure gives room to subtlety in understanding how people navigate the swamp of figure language and reveals full diversity in means, which makes finding the meanings of metaphor possible.
Examples
Direct Route
Imagine a sentence like, “Her words were a soothing balm to his wounded heart.” One has to understand the metaphor: “Somebody’s words work like a soothing balm on a wounded heart.” Carston’s direct route offers that hearers rely on clues and cues in the context to understand the intended message, reducing cognitive processes. They also utilize their knowledge of common metaphoric associations and know that saying “soothing balm” almost always implies that it’s comforting or relieving. Through rapid pragmatic reasoning, listeners can work out that the speaker is saying how the individual’s words are soothing to his receiver’s emotional woe or give healing. The direct route allows for comprehending metaphor in a reasonably short period. It uses the linguistic and cultural knowledge accessible to the hearer to decode the metaphor in the context provided.
Indirect Route
Consider a metaphor in the following line: “The politician’s promises were empty vessels, floating aimlessly on a sea of uncertainty.” This is more complex because it involves more complexity of a concept, making greater demands on the listener’s cognitive elaboration. Carston’s understanding holds that hearers must map out a mental model that secures or fastens the literal meaning of the expressions with their extended figurative reading. So, in this case, listeners are left to make the necessary or conceptual leap from “empty vessels” and that which is “floating hither and thither with the wind” to be able to give a sense of doubt and insubstantiality that political promises are laid at the door of. These may be based on analogy, for example, the links between the physical properties of vessels and the so-called emptiness of promises made by a politician. However, conceptualization in this meaning is more than just symbolic. Still, it should instead comprise conceptual blending in which various domains are fused into one coherent fabric of the message being delivered. The indirect pathway is a much more resource-demanding cognitive effort because listeners have to search these conceptual relations that could fit into the metaphorically used expression to derive its meaning.
Mixed Route
Picture a situation where someone describes a challenging task by saying, “Writing a novel is like embarking on a voyage into the unknown.” This metaphor combines elements that can be processed through direct and indirect routes. On one hand, comparing writing a novel to embarking on a voyage immediately triggers associations with exploration, discovery, and uncertainty. In the direct route, one would easily capture the primary meaning of the metaphor. Writing a novel is like entering uncharted terrain with difficulties and looking for discoveries.
But the metaphor also invites further reflection and elaboration. The following is in line with expanding that metaphor through the indirect route. They may ponder the similarity of how one writes a novel, such as the plot, character development, and revision, to the various phases of a journey: setting out to sea, negotiating the stormy seas, and arriving at new shores. Through analogical reasoning and conceptual blending, the listener may try to understand how creative writing relates to or does not relate to the maritime adventure’s ups and downs and even the flukes.
The mixed route to metaphor processing in this example illustrates that beings can draw upon both rapid pragmatic inferencing and more profound cognitive elaboration concurrently to capture the overall sense of the figurative language in use. Listeners hold an ostensibly complex view of metaphor’s richness, complexity, and multi-dimensionality in meaning, which Carston’s theoretical framework enforces.
These examples reveal how Robyn Carston’s theory of metaphor processing reveals multiple and contrasting cognitive strategies people rely on when trying to interpret figurative language. Whereas the direct route works through fast pragmatic inferences and dependence on contextual cues that would help in rapid understanding, the indirect route involves more profound cognitive elaboration and some conceptual mapping of what is involved in underlying conceptual mappings of metaphors. The Carston model postulates a fascinating and applicable view of how both routes might be considered in a complete account of metaphor comprehension that focuses on the dynamic interaction between linguistic structure and pragmatic context and sequences of cognitive processes.
Experimental Studies
Consistently with Carston’s ideas in her theory, which assumes that a metaphor is properly processed, various experiments will test the cognitive mechanisms that process metaphorical language in real time. Most research on these metaphors happens through simple terminologies and methodologies, so participants are quickly brought into the experience of how they maneuver and make sense of figuration, directly and indirectly. One study tested Carston’s idea that there was a lightning-fast pragmatic inference process by which context triggers metaphor comprehension and linguistic expression contributes only to its literal semantics (Song et al., 2020, p. 420). In that research, illustrative sentences, such as “The lawyer was a shark in the courtroom,” were presented to individuals who provided interpretations of the explanatory sentences through a written questionnaire in an open format. According to the researchers, the listeners used the context of the conversation and employed pragmatic reasoning to determine the intended meaning of the metaphors (Ruibo-Fernandez et al., 2015, p. 28). For instance, most participants inferred the metaphor to mean that the lawyer is an aggressive or ruthless person during the argument; thus, using context as a clue seemed to get the symbolic meaning fast.
Another experimental work examined the cognitive procedures in comprehending metaphors postulated by Carston from an indirect access view. In the case of the experiment at hand, participants had to understand metaphors that prompted them to think more concretely, as does the statement, “Time is a thief stealing precious moments .”Participants are then asked to express their understanding of this symbolic statement with simple tasks like drawing or sentence completion. From the task, researchers noticed and derived meaning; participants used different cognitive strategies like analogical reasoning and conceptual mapping (Ronderos & Falkum, 2023, p. 14). So, for example, some participants made drawings where time is equal to a thief who has stolen some precious things, thereby showing this wisdom for their success in creating a mental picture that somehow combined the literal and the metaphorical components of the metaphor.
Consistent with Carston’s view that metaphor interpretation is dynamic, experimental work is also conducted to investigate how individual differences in cognitive style and linguistic proficiency may impact metaphor processing. The researchers who designed the surveys and tasks for participants from different linguistic environments and with diverse cognitive profiles demonstrated how other such people would be in their interpretations of metaphors. The results of subjects showed that people with higher linguistics aptitude are more likely to search for cues or pragmatically infer meaning from the context (Chesters, 2018, p. 140). People with an analysis-oriented cognitive style exhibit increased activity in the cognitive elaboration necessary for metaphor comprehension. All this research brings the same fact to notice: individual differences must be considered when trying to understand how people can navigate and interpret figurative language.
In general, these tendencies turn the attention of researchers towards the approach to understanding the fundamental mechanisms of cognitive work with metaphoric meaning carried out under direct guidance with experimental research into metaphor comprehension, according to Robyn Carston. Through simple language and accessible methodologies, scholars showed that people perceive the meanings of metaphors not only by direct processing but also indirectly through various contextual cues together with pragmatic reasoning and cognitive elaboration. This allowed research like this to be part of the general human understanding of verbal communication.
Opposing View (D Wilson’s Views)
The consideration of the phenomenon of metaphor processing in Carston’s view suggests that there are two distinct routes to this kind of language; D. Wilson takes the opposing view that there is only one such route. This is a radical conception based on lexical adjustment, where a conventional metaphor can be grasped through a lexically adjusted metaphor without any other cognitive routes. In other words, Wilson suggests that people change the meaning of words in their lexical entry to a metaphorical occurrence rather than utilize different methods for direct versus indirect processing.
Wilson’s lexical adjustment account provides a relatively simple way of explaining how a metaphor is understood. In this view, when listeners hear a metaphor, they will draw upon their understanding of the literal meanings of words that occur (Sperber & Wilson, 2008,p. 84). Then, they make these meanings explicit or adjust them in light of any contextual information they can bring to interpreting the metaphorical expression. For instance, in the metaphor, “Time is a thief,” people first know what time and a thief are in their literal meanings. But in that context of the metaphor, they adjust their interpretation that time means a thing that takes away priceless moments from us.
Through such lexical adjustment, people can understand metaphorical expressions with great ease—without the so-called separate cognitive routes. In contrast to Carston’s proposal—independent mechanisms for direct and indirect processing- Wilson seems to lean toward a unique approach to understanding metaphor (Wilson, 2018, p. 9). Or, as Wilson describes it, the cognitive effort with metaphors usually rests on the meaning adjustments of the words within the symbolic environment. It does not involve separate pragmatic inferences or become complex through cognitive elaboration.
In addition, Wilson’s lexical adjustment model relates to the role of conventionalization in processing metaphors. Thus, he suggests that most metaphors undergo conventionalization such that through this process, most linguistic group members will have heard and apprehended those expressions. In that regard, language users adjust their evaluations of words in these conventionalized metaphors to consider their familiarity with the specific expressions without necessarily believing them further.
Wilson argues against Carston’s proposal of two separate paths to metaphor processing and sets forth a more economical, powerful alternative. Hers suggests that instead of involving independent mechanisms for direct and indirect understanding, people merely tune their interpretations of words that come up in metaphors on some hint found in the context. According to Wilson, this suffices to explain the understanding of conventional and metaphors.
On the other hand, two-route theorists criticize Wilson’s lexical adjustment account. They base their criticism on her method, arguing that such a process might oversimplify some of the more cognitive efforts implied by metaphor comprehension. According to critics, this adjustment may work for ordinary metaphors but will not do justice to the realm of more abstract or even odd expressions.
Yet Carston, among others, adds that Wilson’s account omits the contribution of pragmatic inference and cognitive elaboration to comprehend metaphor. More often than not, making sense of a metaphorical expression involves more than adjusting what the words might mean; it entails making inferences about what is intended in making the links between domains and constructing a way of understanding that includes those links.
In conclusion, although Robyn Carston outlines two mechanisms for processing metaphor, D. This is the basis for Wilson’s propounding of his lexical adjustment account. According to Wilson’s perspective, the comprehension of words in a metaphor is something that a person adjusts according to other contextual clues given at that moment, providing a more straightforward explanation for metaphor comprehension. Yet the account has been criticized for oversimplifying the cognitive processes involved and undervaluing the role of pragmatic inference and cognitive elaboration. The fact that the two-route account proposed by Carston and the lexical adjustment account by Wilson disagree with each other emphasizes that the search for understanding the exact nature of our comprehension of figurative language never ends.
Examples
- Wilson has explained the process of linguistic adjustment. In this explanation, he leads us to a simplified approach to metaphor interpretation. Examples will illustrate this.
Conventional Metaphor
Take, for example, the metaphor “He’s a lion on the battlefield.” Under Wilson’s theory, when a reader is presented with this metaphor, he first understands the literal sense of the words “lion” and “battlefield.” When the symbolic context comes, he adjusts his reading of each of these words to their conventional associations. In this case, “lion” would have to be adjusted to suggest bravery, strength, and ferocity; “battlefield” also had to be drawn from its changed meaning as representing a challenging or competitive environment. With this linguistic adjustment, people understand the metaphor and conclude that the person possesses qualities typical of a lion in complex or conflicting situations.
Novel Metaphor
Consider the more novel metaphor now: “Her laughter is a symphony of joy.” In this metaphor, one word is assigned from usual concepts with the other—laughter is associated with sound and amusement, and symphony is associated with orchestral music.
According to Wilson, the adjustment in the use of words that people make is based on understanding those words within the symbolic context. They know that “laughter” is being compared to a “symphony,” so it is interpreted to mean that it is harmonic, ecstatic, and vibrant. So, in this context, regarding the process of linguistic modification, people understand the metaphor because the person’s laughter evinces an effect of joyous harmony. That is, just as when listening to a symphony, people can enjoy the sound due to the excellent harmony of the instruments. Extended Metaphor
Finally, there’s the extended metaphor: “Life is a journey, and each choice we make is a fork in the road.” Now, take that metaphor of life as a journey, wherein each choice stands for a metaphorical fork in the road. According to Wilson’s view, it is just such an ability that makes people adjust their meaning of the words “life,” “journey,” and “fork in the road” within the symbolic context. They understand that “life” is extended to a journey, which provides an insinuation of advancing through experiences and choices. The combination “fork in the road” is changed to describe essential choices or decisions from which something takes a form. Through this process of linguistic adjustment, participants can understand the extended metaphor, knowing that life offers decisions and many possible paths akin to a journey with multiple forks.
In these examples, it is visible how D. Wilson’s lexical adjustment account simplifies the process of the comprehension of metaphor by moving to word adjustment in a metaphorical frame. Rather than having separate cognitive routes postulated, Wilson’s account indicates that an individual can understand both conventional and novel metaphors through accommodation and adjustment based on the context of sentences from their original understanding of the lexicon. This is an economical way of explaining how metaphorical language is understood without such sophisticated cognitive processes being postulated to happen within the listener.
Comparison Between the Two Views
Complementary aspects that can be drawn from that observation of the two theories considered by Robyn Carston’s two-route model to D. Wilson’s lexical adjustment account postulate there are two routes to metaphor processing, in which direct, pragmatic inference is no less vital than indirect cognitive elaboration to understanding such a metaphor. This input only reinforces the complex nature of metaphor comprehension whereby context and cognitive operations substantially but incompletely derive meaning from metaphors. On the other hand, the linguistic adjustment account suggests that no such localist mental routes are necessary—people adjust their understanding of words when they appear in a metaphorical context. Although more sophisticated concerning metaphor interpretation, this model is much more complex than Wilson’s, and it provides a more direct paradigm that one could label as governing merely lexical adjustment. While these approaches vary in recognition of the dynamic interplay between structure and cognition vis-à-vis pragmatic context in metaphor comprehension, both acknowledge that linguistic structure is crucial. Both views may form a support that considers varying metonymic points where people stand in understanding figurative language.
Standing Ground
Navigating the two positions between Carston’s two routes and the single-route view expressed by D. Wilson, “by lexical adjustment,” seems to accept some insightful point from either vantage and gives them due honor in the same recognition of the flux that attends upon metaphor comprehension.
Carston’s model helps pinpoint the diverse nature of relevant processing metaphors for direct inference and elaboration done inferentially on a cognitive level. This perspective views individuals as able to make an intended meaning of familiar or conventional metaphors with relatively quick ease, usually by hinging on contextual hints and pragmatic reasoning. For example, such sayings as “time is money” can easily be understood in the light of rapid practical inference where it is conventionalized to connote time as being much related to value. However, the Carston model also requires cognitive elaboration, especially for more abstract or innovative metaphors.
Wilson’s lexical adjustment account, then, supplies a welcome complement to these views: it reasserts the modifying function of word meanings in metaphors. Still, it does so within the context of metaphoric communication. Using this view, one can quickly understand the processing of conventional metaphors as being relatively easy since many of their adjustments are assumed to be completed for familiar expressions. Traditional and novel metaphors, according to Wilson’s model, are processed by making word meaning adjustments via a single process; there is no need for separate cognitive routes.
In general, a fair view of metaphor processing takes it as given that any interesting issue will present an interplay of direct and indirect mechanisms, possibly involving individual differences, along with linguistic and contextual variations. What kind of processing occurs depends more on the richness or abstraction of the expressible content than on any fundamental difference in degrees of aptitude for being supplied with context.
The balance between direct and indirect routes to metaphor processing may be dynamic and shifted with the complexity of the metaphor and cognitive resources available. People sometimes use cues from context to quickly get an idea about what a specific metaphor is talking to them. At the same time, other times, they will cognitively elaborate for themselves so that no stone of hermeneutics is left unturned.
A well-tempered view of how metaphors are processed incorporates Carston and Wilson’s two models to supplement the other. Being in dynamic interaction, they relate direct and indirect bases with each other for processing metaphors. This allows the reading of metaphors to be a somewhat complex view of a traveler between conceptual domains.
Conclusion
The dynamical interaction of the opposite approaches is reflected in R. Carston’s two-route model and D. Wilson’s lexical adjustment account. Carston emphasizes the many-sidedness in metaphor understanding, direct, pragmatic inference, and indirect cognitive elaboration. Such an approach evinces holding regard for contextual clues and, simultaneously, cognitive processes at work in making sense of metaphors, primarily abstract or novel metaphoric expressions.
Wilson’s theory of linguistic adjustment is more economical because he postulates a single mechanism of adjustment in the understanding of words when these appear under a metaphorical use without recourse to separate cognitive routes. This view talks about the efficiency related to processes involved with understanding conventional metaphors, where such adjustments may happen automatically in light of expressions that one comes across frequently.
A balanced perspective in processing recognizes the values and incorporates both views’ advantages, thereby addressing the situation-sensitive nature of metaphor comprehension. It accepts that real-life individuals access direct and indirect means depending on linguistic proficiency, cognitive style, and situational constraints. If natural pragmatic inference may account for familiar or conventional metaphors, much deeper cognitive elaboration may still be required for more abstract or novel ones.
Individuals can further determine the balance of direct and indirect routes to metaphor processing. Some may be somewhat or strongly predisposed naturally toward one principle over another, overwhelming cognitive elaboration through a cognitive preference or the difficulty of the metaphor.
In essence, metaphor processing exemplifies the rich potential and complex ways of human cognition and communication. Perhaps more importantly, this middle-of-the-road stance notes that the interplay among linguistic structure, cognitive processes, and pragmatic context must be weighed to understand how people use and interpret metaphors. In the end, the misunderstanding of a metaphor is not so simple because of the complex interrelationships among various mechanisms of cognitive analysis in deriving meaning from a linguistic expression.
References
Carston & Wearing 2011. Metaphor, hyperbole, and simile: a pragmatic approach. Language and Cognition 3–2, 283–312.
Carston, Robyn. 2010. Metaphor: Ad hoc concepts, literal meaning, and mental images. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 110: 295–321.
Chesters, T. 2018. There is a lingering of the literal in some poems of Emily Dickinson. In Cave & Wilson Reading Beyond the Code: Literature and Relevance Theory. Oxford University Press.
Ge, M., Mao, R. and Cambria, E., 2023. A survey on computational metaphor processing techniques: From identification, interpretation, generation to application. Artificial Intelligence Review, 56(Suppl 2), pp.1829-1895.
Holyoak, K.J. and Stamenković, D., 2018. Metaphor comprehension: A critical review of theories and evidence. Psychological Bulletin, 144(6), p.641.
Mao, R., Li, X., Ge, M. and Cambria, E., 2022. MetaPro: A computational metaphor processing model for text pre-processing. Information Fusion, 86, pp.30-43.
Morsanyi, K., Stamenković, D. and Holyoak, K.J., 2020. Metaphor processing in autism: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Developmental Review, 57, p.100925.
Ronderos, C., & Falkum, I. 2023. Suppression of literal meaning in single and extended metaphors. Frontiers in Psychology 14.
Ruibo-Fernandez, P., Cummins, C., Tian, Y, 2016. Are single and extended metaphors processed differently? A test of two Relevance-Theoretic accounts. Journal of Pragmatics 94, 15–28.
Song, W., Guo, J., Fu, R., Liu, T. and Liu, L., 2020. A knowledge graph embedding approach for metaphor processing. IEEE/ACM Transactions on Audio, Speech, and Language Processing, 29, pp.406-420.
Sperber, D. & Wilson, D. 2008. A deflationary account of metaphors. In R. Gibbs (ed.) The Cambridge Handbook of Metaphor and Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 84–106.
Wilson & Carston 2007 A unitary approach to lexical pragmatics’ (in N. Burton-Roberts (ed.) Pragmatics 230–259.
Wilson, D. 2018. Relevance Theory and Literary Interpretation. In Cave & Wilson (eds) Reading Beyond the Code: Literature and Relevance Theory. Oxford University Press.
write