Elena S. Kulkova
Martin H. FischerRecent experiment-based psycho- and neuro-linguistic research brought new insights into language processing mechanisms and meaning representation in the brain. More specifically, it highlighted the dynamic nature of brain connections and a constant interplay between distributed neuronal circuits during meaning processing. These developments led to a shift from an amodal view, which perceives conceptual information activation as parallel to and independent from adjoining neural activation in sensorimotor circuits (Mahon and Caramazza, 2008; Meteyard et al., 2012), to the embodied cognition view that highlights the role of sensorimotor experience in the formation of flexible, distributed conceptual representations encompassing features acquired via different perceptual modalities (Fischer and Zwaan, 2008; Barsalou, 2010). Embodied cognition, therefore, suggests that conceptual knowledge and, consequently, semantic knowledge are grounded in bodily experience and situated actions (Glenberg et al., 2008; Pulvermüller, 2013). However, currently there is a tendency toward perceiving embodied and disembodied views not as mutually exclusive distinct theories, but as bridging a gap between them. The hub and spoke model and the sensory-motor model demonstrate attempts to integrate the amodal and modality-specific views (see Mahon, 2015).
A broad range of behavioral, physiological, and neuroimaging data demonstrating co-activation of language- and action-related brain areas support this claim with regard to concrete language (Binder et al., 2005; Pulvermüller et al., 2005; Barsalou, 2008; Hauk et al., 2008). However, the data are less conclusive with regard to figurative expressions, which constitute a significant part of language. One of the reasons is that figurative language subsumes a wide variety of heterogeneous phenomena (metonymy, idioms, metaphors, proverbs, hyperbole, irony) which differ syntactically (from phrasal verbs to compounds and even sentences), as well as in their properties (familiarity, ambiguity, transparency, compositionality, salience, predictability) and essential features (although both irony and hyperbole are based on cognitive contrast, it is a contrast of kind for irony and a contrast in magnitude for hyperbole; Hsiao and Lily, 2010). This diversity and complexity of non-literal language types does not allow for clear-cut and strictly defined boundaries; it has led to a distinction of non-literal phenomena not dichotomously, but along a conventionality continuum (Cacciari and Papagno, 2012).
Secondly, the linguistic phenomena, embraced by the broad term “non-literal language” have been analyzed to different degrees of detail. Specifically, different aspects of metaphor production comprehension and use have been extensively studied (Gibbs, 2008, 2015; Schmidt and Seger, 2009; Bambini et al., 2011; Gibbs and Colston, 2012; Forgács et al., 2014; Obert et al., 2014; Lai and Desai, 2016; Briner et al., 2018; Rataj et al., 2018; Reilly et al., 2019). Furthermore, metaphors represent a powerful cognitive device guided by environmental experiences, which enabled the studies of metaphor framing influences not only on linguistic communication per se, but also on judgments, reasoning, intentions, and actions (Robins and Mayer, 2000; Slepian et al., 2010; Thibodeau and Boroditsky, 2011, 2013; Landau et al., 2014; Marin et al., 2014; Hauser and Schwarz, 2015; Elmore and Luna-Lucero, 2017; Thibodeau et al., 2017). Despite considerable research (Gibbs and Nayak, 1989; Cacciari and Tabossi, 1993; Mashal et al., 2008; Vulchanova et al., 2011; Cuccio et al., 2014; Häuser et al., 2016; Cacciari et al., 2018), the study of idioms still leaves open for debate the questions of defining idioms or differentiating them from other types of non-literal expressions (Cacciari, 2014). One of the main confusions is in defining idioms from metaphors, as it was debated whether idiom processing is possible without constant recourse to conceptual metaphors (Owens, 2016). However, although some idioms are indeed derived from metaphors and can still be partially motivated by conceptual mappings between domains (Gibbs, 1992), idioms as a class comprising syntactically and compositionally differing phenomena (Caillies and Butcher, 2007) are divergent from metaphors. The crucial difference is that idiomatic meaning is predominantly fixed and conventional, and it can be modified but not changed when used in various contexts. Metaphoric meaning, in turn, is flexible and intricate, can be profoundly changed by the context, and therefore always requires online construction (Cacciari, 2014; Bambini et al., 2016). Distinctive neural correlates for processing of idioms (left MTG and left IFG, involved in selection-inhibition operations) and metaphors [left precentral gyrus (BA 6), linking concrete and abstract domains and the left inferior parietal lobe (IPL), executing higher-order cognitive motor functions; Fogassi and Luppino, 2005] also argue against conflating them.
Disregarding these principal differences between the two linguistic forms results in their interchangeable use (e.g., Aziz-Zadeh et al., 2006), which, in turn, may posit serious confoundment, as comprehending these figurative devices that have different mental representations engages dissimilar cognitive mechanisms; based on both semantic and structural analysis of meaning and retrieval from semantic memory during idiom processing, and focused on the conceptual models and templates underlying metaphor meaning construction. Vulchanova et al. (2019) provide a detailed overview of the models of figurative language processing.
Recent studies on processing non-literal expressions with action-related semantics reported activation of motoric brain areas during either literal (Raposo et al., 2009), metaphoric (Desai et al., 2011), or only during metaphor but not idiom processing (Cacciari et al., 2011; Desai et al., 2013). Only limited publications present evidence of sensorimotor engagement during idiomatic meaning comprehension (Boulenger et al., 2009, 2012). Overall, the studies emphasize the role of context in meaning disambiguation and suggest that an increase in abstractness of the language stimuli leads to a decrease in the sensorimotor system's involvement (especially in case of idioms). However, these results could be interpreted not in favor of idiom disembodiment, but as a demonstration of different processing schemas that idioms and metaphors employ: the dual-reference idiomatic nature enables engagement of a hybrid processing mechanism that encompasses both compositional and holistic context-based analysis during idiom comprehension (Caillies and Butcher, 2007; Boulenger et al., 2012; Cacciari and Pesciarelli, 2013). Metaphors, which retain stronger links to the original meaning of the constituent words, rely more on online mental simulation to compute complex, flexible meanings.
Engaging different processing mechanisms may result in spatially and temporally different patterns of neurocognitive involvement (Rapp et al., 2012; Yang and Shu, 2016). For example, Cacciari et al. (2011) reported no motor engagement in idiom processing, but single-pulse TMS applied at the end of sentences to register meaning-induced MEPs could be inefficient to record idiom-induced motor activation, since idioms are processed online (mentally simulated) only until the idiom is recognized, and then a switch to the non-compositional mode (retrieval from semantic memory) occurs. Lack of motor engagement during idiom comprehension can be explained by heterogeneity of idioms: e.g., Raposo et al. (2009) used highly familiar and opaque idioms, which minimized the need for mental simulation during their processing and consequently may have reduced the level of sensorimotor cortical activation. Therefore, idiomatic meaning may be less embodied compared to metaphoric meaning, but not totally disembodied.
This evidence highlights the need for a more profound exploration of properties specific to figurative language types and subtypes of each phenomenon, which could considerably benefit present-stage figurative language research and promote a better understanding of the mechanisms the human brain employs for their acquisition, production, and processing. This will provide an integrative theoretical model that can more comprehensively and consistently outline the cognitive mechanisms and neural circuitry underlying processing of heterogeneous and multifaceted figurative language. Taken together, it will inform the development of more precise neuro-cognitive models, support AI applications and enhance understanding of language processing in general.
Author Contributions
EK and MF have contributed equally to this submission.
Funding
This study was supported by University of Potsdam, library funds.
Conflict of Interest Statement
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
References
Aziz-Zadeh, L., Wilson, S. M., Rizzolatti, G., and Iacoboni, M. (2006). Congruent embodied representations for visually presented actions and linguistic phrases describing actions. Curr. Biol. 16, 1818–1823. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2006.07.060
Bambini, V., Bertini, C., Schaeken, W., Stella, A., and Di Russo, F. (2016). Disentangling metaphor from context: an ERP study. Front. Psychol. 7:559. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00559
Bambini, V., Gentili, C., Ricciardi, E., Bertinetto, P. M., and Pietrini, P. (2011). Decomposing metaphor processing at the cognitive and neural level through functional magnetic resonance imaging. Brain Res. Bull. 86, 203–216. doi: 10.1016/j.brainresbull.2011.07.015
Barsalou, L. W. (2008). Grounding symbolic operations in the brain's modal systems, in Embodied Grounding Social, Cognitive, Affective, and Neuroscientific Approaches, eds G. R. Semin and E. R. Smith (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press), 9–42. doi: 10.1017/CBO9780511805837.002
Barsalou, L. W. (2010). Grounded cognition: past, present, and future. Top. Cogn. Sci. 2, 716–724. doi: 10.1111/j.1756-8765.2010.01115.x
Binder, J. R., Westbury, C. F., McKiernan, K. A., Possing, E. T., and Medler, D. A. (2005). Distinct brain systems for processing concrete and abstract concepts. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 17, 905–917. doi: 10.1162/0898929054021102
Boulenger, V., Hauk, O., and Pulvermüller, F. (2009). Grasping ideas with the motor system: semantic somatotopy in idiom comprehension. Cereb. Cortex 19, 1905–1914. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhn217
Boulenger, V., Shtyrov, Y., and Pulvermüller, F. (2012). When do you grasp the idea? MEG evidence of simultanous idiom understanding. Neuroimage 59, 3502–3513. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2011.11.011
Briner, S. W., Schutzenhofer, M. C., and Virtue, S. M. (2018). Hemispheric processing in conventional metaphor comprehension: the role of general knowledge. Neuropsychologia 114, 101–109. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2018.03.040
Cacciari, C. (2014). Processing multiword idiomatic strings: many words in one? Ment. Lex. 9, 267–293. doi: 10.1075/ml.9.2.05cac
Cacciari, C., Bolognini, N., Senna, I., Pellicciari, M. C., Miniussi, C., and Papagno, C. (2011). Literal, fictive and metaphorical motion sentences preserve the motion component of the verb: a TMS study. Brain Lang. 119, 149–157. doi: 10.1016/j.bandl.2011.05.004
Cacciari, C., Corradini, P., and Ferlazzo, F. (2018). Cognitive and personality components underlying spoken idiom comprehension in context. An exploratory study. Front. Psychol. 9:659. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00659
Cacciari, C., and Papagno, C. (2012). “Neuropsychological and neurophysiological correlates of idiom understanding: how many hemispheres are involved,” The Handbook of the Neuropsychology of Language, ed M. Faust (Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd.), 368–385. doi: 10.1002/9781118432501.ch18
Cacciari, C., and Pesciarelli, F. (2013). Motor activation in literal and non-literal sentences: does time matter? Front. Hum. Neurosci. 7:202. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00202
Cacciari, C., and Tabossi, P. (1993). Idioms. Processing, Structure and Interpretation. Hillsdale, NJ; Hove: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Caillies, S., and Butcher, K. (2007). Processing of idiomatic expressions: evidence for a new hybrid view. Metaphor Symbol 22, 79–108. doi: 10.1080/10926480709336754
Cuccio, V., Ambrosecchia, M., Ferri, F., Carapezza, M., Piparo, F. L., Fogassi, L., et al. (2014). How the context matters. Literal and figurative meaning in the embodied language paradigm. PLoS ONE 9:e115381. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0115381
Desai, R. H., Binder, J. R., Conant, L. L., Mano, Q. R., and Seidenberg, M. S. (2011). The neural career of sensory-motor metaphors. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 23, 2376–2386. doi: 10.1162/jocn.2010.21596
Desai, R. H., Conant, L. L., Binder, J. R., Park, H., and Seidenberg, M. S. (2013). A piece of the action: modulation of sensory-motor regions by action idioms and metaphors. Neuroimage 83, 862–869. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2013.07.044
Elmore, K. C., and Luna-Lucero, M. (2017). Light bulbs or Seeds? How metaphors for ideas influence judgments about Genius. Soc. Psychol. Pers. Sci. 8, 200–208. doi: 10.1177/1948550616667611
Fischer, M. H., and Zwaan, R. A. (2008). Embodied language: a review of the role of the motor system in language comprehension. Q. J. Exp. Psychol. 61, 825–850. doi: 10.1080/17470210701623605
Fogassi, L., and Luppino, G. (2005). Motor functions of the parietal lobe. Curr. Opin. Neurobiol. 15, 626–631. doi: 10.1016/j.conb.2005.10.015
Forgács, B., Lukács, Á., and Pléh, C. (2014). Lateralized processing of novel metaphors: disentangling figurativeness and novelty. Neuropsychologia 56, 101–109. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2014.01.003
Gibbs, R. W. Jr. (2015). Do pragmatic signals affect conventional metaphor understanding? A failed test of deliberate metaphor theory. J. Pragmat. 90, 77–87. doi: 10.1016/j.pragma.2015.05.021
R. W. Gibbs. (ed.) (2008). The Cambridge Handbook of Metaphor and Thought. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. doi: 10.1017/CBO9780511816802
Gibbs, R. W. Jr, and Colston, H. L. (2012). Interpreting Figurative Meaning. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. doi: 10.1017/CBO9781139168779
Gibbs, R. W. Jr, and Nayak, N. P. (1989). Psycholinguistic studies on the syntactic behavior of idioms. Cogn. Psychol. 21, 100–138. doi: 10.1016/0010-0285(89)90004-2
Glenberg, A. M., Sato, M., Cattaneo, L., Riggio, L., Palombo, D., and Buccino, G. (2008). Processing abstract language modulates motor system activity. Q. J. Exp. Psychol. 61, 905–919. doi: 10.1080/17470210701625550
Hauk, O., Shtyrov, Y., and Pulvermüller, F. (2008). The time course of action and action-word comprehension in the human brain as revealed by neurophysiology. J. Physiol. Paris 102, 50–58. doi: 10.1016/j.jphysparis.2008.03.013
Hauser, D. J., and Schwarz, N. (2015). The war on prevention: Bellicose cancer metaphors hurt (some) prevention intentions. Pers. Soc. Psychol. Bull. 41, 66–77. doi: 10.1177/0146167214557006
Häuser, K. I., Titone, D. A., and Baum, S. R. (2016). The role of the ventro-lateral prefrontal cortex in idiom comprehension: an rTMS study. Neuropsychologia 91, 360–370. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2016.09.003
Hsiao, C. H., and Lily, I. (2010). Metaphor and hyperbolic expressions of emotion in Mandarin Chinese conversation. J. Pragmat. 42, 1380–1396. doi: 10.1016/j.pragma.2009.09.006
Lai, V. T., and Desai, R. H. (2016). The grounding of temporal metaphors. Cortex 76, 43–50. doi: 10.1016/j.cortex.2015.12.007
Landau, M. J., Oyserman, D., Keefer, L. A., and Smith, G. C. (2014). The college journey and academic engagement: how metaphor use enhances identity-based motivation. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 106, 679. doi: 10.1037/a0036414
Mahon, B. Z. (2015). What is embodied about cognition? Lang. Cogn. Neurosci. 30, 420–429. doi: 10.1080/23273798.2014.987791
Mahon, B. Z., and Caramazza, A. (2008). A critical look at the embodied cognition hypothesis and a new proposal for grounding conceptual content. J. Physiol. Paris 102, 59–70. doi: 10.1016/j.jphysparis.2008.03.004
Marin, A., Reimann, M., and Castaño, R. (2014). Metaphors and creativity: direct, moderating, and mediating effects. J. Consum. Psychol. 24, 290–297. doi: 10.1016/j.jcps.2013.11.001
Mashal, N., Faust, M., Hendler, T., and Jung-Beeman, M. (2008). Hemispheric differences in processing the literal interpretation of idioms: converging evidence from behavioral and fMRI studies. Cortex 44, 848–860. doi: 10.1016/j.cortex.2007.04.004
Meteyard, L., Cuadrado, S. R., Bahrami, B., and Vigliocco, G. (2012). Coming of age: a review of embodiment and the neuroscience of semantics. Cortex 48, 788–804. doi: 10.1016/j.cortex.2010.11.002
Obert, A., Gierski, F., Calmus, A., Portefaix, C., Declercq, C., Pierot, L., et al. (2014). Differential bilateral involvement of the parietal gyrus during predicative metaphor processing: an auditory fMRI study. Brain Lang. 137, 112–119. doi: 10.1016/j.bandl.2014.08.002
Owens, J. (2016). The lexical nature of idioms. Lang. Sci. 57, 49–69. doi: 10.1016/j.langsci.2016.05.004
Pulvermüller, F. (2013). How neurons make meaning: brain mechanisms for embodied and abstract-symbolic semantics. Trends Cogn. Sci. 17, 458–470. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2013.06.004
Pulvermüller, F., Hauk, O., Nikulin, V. V., and Ilmoniemi, R. J. (2005). Functional links between motor and language systems. Eur. J. Neurosci. 21, 793–797. doi: 10.1111/j.1460-9568.2005.03900.x
Raposo, A., Moss, H. E., Stamatakis, E. A., and Tyler, L. K. (2009). Modulation of motor and premotor cortices by actions, action words and action sentences. Neuropsychologia, 47, 388–396.
Rapp, A. M., Mutschler, D. E., and Erb, M. (2012). Where in the brain is nonliteral language? A coordinate-based meta-analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging studies. Neuroimage 63, 600–610. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2012.06.022
Rataj, K., Przekoracka-Krawczyk, A., and van der Lubbe, R. H. (2018). On understanding creative language: the late positive complex and novel metaphor comprehension. Brain Res. 1678, 231–244. doi: 10.1016/j.brainres.2017.10.030
Reilly, M., Howerton, O., and Desai, R. H. (2019). Time-course of motor involvement in literal and metaphoric action sentence processing: A TMS study. Front. Psychol. 10:371. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00371
Robins, S., and Mayer, R. E. (2000). The metaphor framing effect: metaphorical reasoning about text-based dilemmas. Discourse Process. 30, 57–86. doi: 10.1207/S15326950dp3001_03
Schmidt, G. L., and Seger, C. A. (2009). Neural correlates of metaphor processing: the roles of figurativeness, familiarity and difficulty. Brain Cogn. 71, 375–386. doi: 10.1016/j.bandc.2009.06.001
Slepian, M. L., Weisbuch, M., Rutchick, A. M., Newman, L. S., and Ambady, N. (2010). Shedding light on insight: priming bright ideas. J. Exp. Soc. Psychol. 46, 696–700. doi: 10.1016/j.jesp.2010.03.009
Thibodeau, P. H., and Boroditsky, L. (2011). Metaphors we think with: the role of metaphor in reasoning. PLoS ONE 6:e16782. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0016782
Thibodeau, P. H., and Boroditsky, L. (2013). Natural language metaphors covertly influence reasoning. PLoS ONE 8:e52961. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0052961
Thibodeau, P. H., Hendricks, R. K., and Boroditsky, L. (2017). How linguistic metaphor scaffolds reasoning. Trends Cogn. Sci. 21, 852–863. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2017.07.001
Vulchanova, M., Milburn, E., Vulchanov, V., and Baggio, G. (2019). Boon or Burden? The role of compositional meaning in figurative language processing and acquisition. J Logic Lang Information, 1–29. doi: 10.1007/s10849-019-09282-7
Vulchanova, M., Vulchanov, V., and Stankova, M. (2011). Idiom comprehension in the first language: a developmental study. Vigo Int. J. Appl. Linguist. 8, 207–234.
Keywords: embodiment, figurative language, metaphor, idiom, processing
Citation: Kulkova ES and Fischer MH (2019) Idioms in the World: A Focus on Processing. Front. Psychol. 10:1155. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01155
Received: 31 October 2018; Accepted: 02 May 2019;
Published: 24 May 2019.
Edited by:
Gary Libben, Brock University, CanadaReviewed by:
Patrick Bonin, Université de Bourgogne, FranceMila Vulchanova, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway
Copyright © 2019 Kulkova and Fischer. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Elena S. Kulkova, a3Vsa292YSYjeDAwMDQwO3VuaS1wb3RzZGFtLmRl; orcid.org/0000-0002-2145-8956
†Martin H. Fischer orcid.org/0000-0003-3818-7272