Skating on thin ice

Literal meaning and understanding idioms in conversation∗

Bibliographic Data

ID11273448
AuthorsRaymond W Gibbs (0000-0003-2038-223X, University of California, Santa Cruz, corresponding author)
Year1986
Volume9
Issue1
Pages17-30
Publication date1986-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueDiscourse Processes (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0163-853X • E-ISSN: 1532-6950
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/01638538609544629
OpenAlexW2138447142
LanguageEN
Citations received41
References cited12

The question of whether people always analyze the literal meanings of idiomatic expressions, such as You can let the cat out of the bag, (meaning “You can reveal the secret”) was examined in two experiments. In Experiment 1 subjects read stories that ended with either literal or nonliteral uses of idomatic expressions. After reading each story, subjects made a sentence classification judgment for sentences that could be either a literal, nonliteral, or unrelated paraphrase of the last story sentence. Results indicated that subjects were primed on the nonliteral targets when they read idiomatic expressions, but were not primed on the literal targets. When subjects read literal uses of these expressions there was no priming on the literal targets. However, subjects’ responses to the nonliteral targets were facilitated. Experiment 2 showed that these results were due to the way people actually process idiomatic expressions and cannot be attributed to some idiosyncratic aspect of the procedure. These results suggest that people do not ordinarily process the complete literal or compositional interpretations of idioms. Moreover, the results confirm the idea that people are automatically biased toward interpreting literal uses of idiomatic expressions conventionally, as idioms, before deriving their intended literal meanings

Conversation · Linguistics · Literal (mathematical logic · Literal and figurative language · Literal translation · Meaning (existential · Paraphrase · Priming (agriculture · Reading (process · Sentence · Source text · Computer Science · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition · Lexicography and Language Studies · linguistics and terminology studies · Philosophy · Psychology