Researchers Cristóbal Pagán Cánovas, of the Institute for Culture and Society of the University of Navarra; Javier Valenzuela Manzanares, from department of English at the University of Murcia; and Julio Santiago de Torres, from department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Granada, have published the first study that provides experimental evidence on the integration of the meaning of the terms of a metaphor.

"Traditionally, the research has explained that in metaphors and similes such as 'Lawyers are sharks' there is a projection of content from a vehicle or term source -sharks- to a tenor or term goal -lawyers-, revealing a new meaning in the latter", they explain. 

In their work 'Like the machete the snake: Integration of topic and vehicle in poetry comprehension reveals meaning construction processes', published in the journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, they argue that this model "does not account for emergent meanings that are present neither in the vehicle nor in the tenor". This is the case, for example, in the meaning of inappropriate behavior that emerges in "lawyers are sharks." "Such behavior," they clarify, "is not a characteristic of the concept 'shark,' which only does what is expected of it. Therefore, it cannot be explained as result of a direct transfer from the concept of shark to that of 'lawyer'."

To explain these new meanings that emerge in metaphors, they turn to the Blending Theory, which proposes that there is no direct transfer between concepts, but rather a mixture that affects both. "According to this theory, there is an activation, association and opportunistic integration of mental spaces, small conceptual packages that we build as we think and speak", they state.  

"As the machete to the snake."

In the study, the authors decided to focus on poetry, as it is the field in which creative language reaches its peak. Specifically, they chose one of the classic issues of direct transfer models, the mapping of space to time, through five lines of the poem 'Beyond Love' by Octavio Paz: "Everything threatens us: / time, which in living fragments divides / the one I was from the one I will be / like the machete from the snake". 

The authors stress that they chose the simile for its particular connection of the image of the snake with time and the self: "The fifth line provokes the reader to imagine a scene in which the snake is cut by a machete". Three fundamental ideas were considered to construct the meaning of these lines: the machete is time as a separating agent; the snake is the self divided into fragments corresponding to the past self and the future self; and there is a violent cutting of the machete on the snake. 

Eighty-nine participants were asked to read the poem and draw the snake, and subsequently interpret their own drawing. There were two groups: those who had assigned the snake a temporal meaning and those who had not. "The results showed the creation of conceptual blending: when temporal connections are made in the simile, the mental images of the snake and the timeline become integrated; snakes are drawn straighter and oriented to the right," they note. 

Visualizing snakes as timelines

According to them, both features (straightness and orientation) are consistent with standard spatial characteristics of timelines, so that a hybrid is produced: a timeline that looks like a snake or a snake with timeline characteristics. "Participants adapted their visualization of the snake (the vehicle) to achieve a spatial configuration that represents temporal relationships (the tenor)," they append. 

"When processing similes and, most likely, metaphors, one does not project conceptual features only from the vehicle to the tenor. It is not simply a matter of understanding one through the other. Our data shows that both terms are starting points from which we integrate selected elements into a new conceptualization that emerges," the study concludes.

"Understanding the direction and complexity of the projections between concepts is fundamental for the study of the construction of meaning, of the training of ideas, and of imagination and creativity in general. Numerous models from linguistics, psychology, artificial intelligence, and other sciences for the study of the human mind are based on the research on metaphor and conceptual integration", points out Cristóbal Pagán, researcher of the ICS ' project 'Public discourse'.