JOURNAL

OF MEMORY

AND

LANGUAGE

31,485506

(1992)

What Do idioms Realty Mean?

W.

RAYMOND

GIBBS,

JR.

Universify of California, Santa Cruz

The dead metaphor view of idiomaticity suggests that idioms were once metaphoric but
have lost their metaphoricity over time and now are equivalent to simple literal phrases such
that blow your stack = to get very angry, crack the whip = to exert authority, and
spill the beans = to reveal a secret. The purpose of the present studies was to demonstrate that idioms are not dead metaphors but have more complex meanings that are motivated by conceptual metaphors linking idiom phrases with their figurative interpretations.
Six experiments are reported that examine the difference between idioms and their literal
paraphrases. A fust study examined peoples intuitions about different knowledge domains
to illustrate that the meanings of idioms are consistent with the source-to-target domain
mappings of the conceptual metaphors that motivate these phrases figurative meanings.
The data from Experiments 2 and 3 indicate that people view idioms as having more complex
meanings than do their roughly, equivalent literal paraphrases. Experiments 4 through 6
show that idioms are most appropriate to use and easiest to comprehend when they are
encountered in discourse situations that are consistent with the entailments of the conceptual metaphors that motivate these phrases idiomatic meanings. The findings from these
studies suggest that idioms are not dead metaphors with simple figurative interpretations.
Instead, idioms have complex meanings that are motivated by independently existing conceptual metaphors that are partly constitutive of everyday thought. D ISZ Academic press, w.

One of the most persistent ideas in both

folk and linguistic accounts of idioms is
that these phrases are dead metaphors.
It is commonly assumed that idioms were
metaphorical in their origins, but have lost
their metaphoricity over time and now exist
as frozen, semantic units or as dead metaphors. Although metaphors are lively, creative, and resistant to literal paraphrase, idioms are dead, hackneyed expressions that
are equivalent in meaning to simple literal
phrases. To many scholars, classifying an
utterance or phrase as idiomatic is tantamount to a theoretical explanation in itself, since it assumes that idioms are dead
metaphors and really belong to the wastebasket of formulas and phrases that are sepThis research was supported by Grant MH42980
from the National Institute of Mental Health and by a
Faculty Research Grant from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Correspondence and reprint requests may be sent to Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr., Program in Experimental Psychology, Clark Kerr Hall,
University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064.

arate from the generative component of the

grammar (Gibbs, 1990, in press).
Most idiom dictionaries give simple delinitions for idioms (Boatner, Gates, & Makkai, 1975; Cowie, Mackin, & McCaig, 1983;
Long & Summer, 1979). For instance,
crack the whip is defined as to be in control, spill the beans means to make
known a secret, go to pieces means to
become distressed, and blow your stack
means to become very angry. Of course,
dictionary definitions do not necessarily reflect the complexity in peoples mental representations for words and phrases. Yet
many semantic theories assume that the
meanings of idioms are best represented by
simple definitions because idioms are
mostly dead metaphors (Cruse, 1986;
Palmer, 1981). My contention, contrary to
the dead metaphor view, is that idioms
have complex figurative interpretations
that are not arbitrarily determined but are
motivated by independently existing conceptual metaphors that provide the founda-

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Copyright Q 1992 by Academic Press, Inc.
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486

RAYMOND

W.

GIBBS,

JR.

tion for much of our everyday thought and people process idioms more quickly than
reasoning.
they do corresponding
literal phrases
There has recently been a great deal of (Gibbs, 1980, 1986; Gibbs & Gonzales,
research in cognitive linguistics and psy- 1985; Gibbs, Nayak, & Cutting, 1989; Orcholinguistics that questions the dead met- tony, Schallert, Reynolds, & Antos, 1978;
aphor view of idiomaticity
(Fillmore, Kay,
Swinney & Cutler, 1979). However, no
& OConner, 1988; Gibbs, 1990; Gibbs & work has specifically examined how and
Nayak, 1991, 1989; Gibbs & OBrien, 1990; why idioms actually differ in meaning from
Lakoff, 1987; Langacker, 1987; Nayak & their literal paraphrases.
Gibbs, 1990). This work generally suggests
Consider the phrases blow your stack,
that many idioms are not simple, dead
jlip your lid, and hit the ceiling. Why would
metaphors, but actually retain a good deal speakers use these expressions to mean to
of their metaphoricity.
For example, the get very angry? My hypothesis is that
figurative meanings of blow your stack and these idioms are not equivalent to a simple,
flip your lid are specifically motivated by literal paraphrase such as to get very antwo independently
existing conceptual
gry because they have complex semantic
mappings in long-term memory-MIND
IS configurations
that are motivated by two
A CONTAINER
and ANGER
IS conceptual metaphors-MIND
IS A CONHEATED
FLUID
IN A CONTAINER.
TAINER
and ANGER
IS HEATED
These conceptual metaphors allow speak- FLUID IN A CONTAINER.
The MIND IS
ers to refer to ideas about getting angry
A CONTAINER
metaphor is part of the
through particular
instantiations
of the more general CONDUIT metaphor (Reddy,
mapping
from a source domain (e.g.,
1979), and the ANGER IS HEAT metaphor
heated fluid) onto a target domain (e.g.,
comes from the common folk theory that
anger).
Speakers make sense of idi- the physiological
effects of anger are inoms, such as blow your stack and flip your creased body heat, increased internal preslid, precisely because their meanings can be sure, and agitation (Kovecses, 1986; Lamotivated by the conceptual mappings that koff, 1987). Thus, peoples metaphorical
link the individual words in idioms to their mapping of knowledge from a source domain (e.g., heated fluid in a container) onto
figurative meanings.
Various experimental studies have inves- a target domain (e.g., the anger emotion)
helps them conceptualize in more concrete
tigated the psycholinguistic
consequences
terms what is understood about the target
of this conceptual view of idiomaticity.
mapping preSome research showed that peoples tacit domain. This metaphorical
serves the structural characteristics or the
knowledge of different conceptual metacognitive topology of the source domain
phors (e.g., the MIND IS A CONTAINER,
(Lakoff, 1990). For example, our underANGER IS HEATED FLUID IN A CONTAINER) constrain their mental images for standing that too much heated fluid can
idiomatic phrases (Gibbs & OBrien, 1990). cause a sealed container to explode is
mapped onto the target domain of anger
Other studies demonstrated that peoples
such that we conceptualize
the explometaphorical
understanding
of emotion
concepts, such as anger, joy, sadness, and sion of someones anger as being perand with great infear, facilitates the context-sensitive
use formed unintentionally
tensity. Various specific entailments result
and understanding of idioms in discourse
(Nayak & Gibbs, 1990). My aim in the from these general metaphorical mappings,
that provide specific insight
present studies was to show that idioms are entailments
into the causes, intentionality,
manner, and
not equivalent in meaning to their literal
paraphrases. Numerous studies report that consequences of the activities described by

IDIOMATIC

stacks blowing, lids flipping, and ceilings

being hit.
The metaphorical ways in which we partially conceptualize
experiences, such as
anger, provide part of the motivation for
why linguistic expressions such as hit the
ceiling, jlip your lid, or blow your stack
make sense in having the figurative meanings they do (Gibbs, 1990; Gibbs & Nayak,
1991). On the other hand, literal paraphrases of these idioms such as to get very
angry do not convey the same inferences
about the causes, intentionality,
and manner in which someone experiences and expresses his or her anger. Most literal paraphrases of idioms are not motivated by the
same set of rich conceptual metaphors as
are idioms (Gibbs & OBrien, 1990). This
difference between idioms and their literal
paraphrases is not simply due to the fact
that idioms are a type of figurative language
and thus more likely to be motivated by
conceptual metaphors than are literal expressions. Indeed, many literal expressions
make sense to us precisely because they
too are motivated
by conceptual
metaphors. For example, the expressions: He
attacked every weak point in my argument;
Z demolished his argument; and His criticisms were right on target appear to most

speakers as being fairly literal. Yet each expression is motivated by the same conceptual metaphor whereby arguments are understood in terms of wars. My claim that
literal paraphrases of idioms are not cleady
motivated by conceptual metaphor is therefore not a comment on literal language per
se. Rather, my hypothesis is that simple literal paraphrases of idioms, such as to get
very angry or to reveal the secret are
not by themselves motivated by single conceptual metaphors and therefore do not
possess the kind of complex interpretations
as do idiomatic phrases. The present experiments aimed to discover whether people
viewed idioms as having different meanings
from their literal paraphrases. These studies are significant not only for psycholin-

487

MEANING

guistic theories of figurative language use,

but also because they provide additional
evidence on the metaphorical foundation of
everyday thought.
EXPERIMENT

The first study attempted to provide data

showing how the figurative meanings of idioms are motivated by conceptual metaphor. The previous work on mental imagery for idioms indicated that people have
very similar intuitions about the actions
that are described by idiomatic expressions
(Gibbs & OBrien, 1990). Consider anger
idioms such as blow your stack, flip your
lid, and hit the ceiling. Participants in the
earlier studies strongly agreed about the
causes, intentionality,
and manner in which
stacks are blown, lids are flipped, and ceilings hit when they form mental images for
these anger idioms. This consistency in
peoples intuitions about their mental images for idioms was attributed to the constraining presence of specific conceptual
metaphors that motivated
the figurative
meanings of these idioms. For the anger idioms studied, the conceptual metaphor ANGER IS HEATED
FLUID
IN A CONTAINER provides part of the link between
an idiom and its figurative meaning and also
constrains the inferences people make
about what these idioms mean.
The present experiment extended these
earlier studies to show that peoples understanding of idiomatic meaning reflects the
particular entailments of their underlying
conceptual metaphors.
Each conceptual
metaphor maps knowledge from a specific
source domain (e.g., HEATED FLUID IN
A CONTAINER)
onto a dissimilar target
domain (e.g., ANGER).
My hypothesis
was that the metaphorical
mappings that
motivate idiomatic meanings preserves the
structural characteristics of the source domain. For example, peoples understanding
of the causes, intentionality,
and manner of
physical events, such as heating fluid in
containers (i.e., source domains), should be

488

RAYMOND

W.

similar to their understandings

of the
causes, intentionality,
and manner of the
anger to which idioms such as blow your
stack, jlip your lid, and hit the ceiling refer.
The purpose of Experiment 1 was to simply assess peoples understanding of the
causes, intentionality,
and manner of the
actions in different source domains (e.g.,
heated fluid in a container, the behavior of
brittle objects in containers, and so on).
These events corresponded to particular
source domains in various conceptual metaphors (e.g., ANGER IS HEATED FLUID
IN A CONTAINER,
IDEAS ARE PHYSICAL ENTITIES
IN CONTAINERS,
THE MIND
IS A BRITTLE
OBJECT,
CONTROL
IS POSSESSION
OF SOME
OBJECT) that have been seen in previous
research as motivating the figurative meanings of idioms such as blow your stack, spill
the beans, lose your grip, and lay down the
law (Gibbs & OBrien, 1990). Participants
read brief scenarios describing specific
source domains. These scenarios make no
reference to anything about idioms or to the
target domains to which idioms refer (e.g.,
anger, the revelation of secrets, going insane, etc). After reading each scenario, for
example, about fluid inside a sealed container, the participants answered specific
questions regarding the cause, intentionality, and manner of various possible events,
such as what might cause the fluid to escape
from a sealed container. If idioms are partially motivated by conceptual metaphors,
then peoples intuitions about the causation, intentionality,
and manner of action
for these metaphors
source domains
should be very similar to what people generally perceive as being the figurative
meanings of these idioms. The results of
this study, therefore, provide the basis for
making specific predictions about what idioms mean, based on an independent assessment of peoples intuitions about the individual source domains in the conceptual
metaphors
that motivate
the figurative
meanings of idioms.

GIBBS,

JR.

Methods
Subjects. Thirty-eight undergraduate students from the University
of California,
Santa Cruz served as participants in this
study. They received course credit for their
service. All the participants
were native
English speakers.
Stimuli and design. Four different conceptual metaphors that motivated the figurative meanings of idioms referring to anger, insanity, exerting control, and revelation were employed as the primary stimuli.
These conceptual metaphors were previously analyzed as motivating the meanings
of different idioms in Gibbs and OBrien
(19!30) and included ANGER IS HEATED
FLUID IN A CONTAINER
(for anger),
the MIND IS A BRITTLE
OBJECT (for
insanity), CONTROL
IS A POSSESSION
(for exerting control), and IDEAS ARE
ENTITIES
IN A CONTAINER
(for revelation).
A short scenario was written to depict
the basic elements in each of the four
source domains. For example, the scenario
for the source domain of heated fluid in a
container stated Imagine
that you are
looking at a container that is shaped like a
cylinder. The top of the container is sealed.
The container is completely
filled with
some sort of fluid. Following each scenario were three questions that queried participants about various events relevant to
these source domains. One question assessed peoples intuitions about the causation of some event (e.g., Describe something that would cause the fluid to come
spontaneously out of the container).
A
second question assessed peoples intuitions about the intentional@
of that event
(e.g., Imagine that something caused the
fluid to come out of the container. Do you
think that the fluid comes out on purpose or
does the fluid just somehow get out by accident?). A final question assessed peoples intuitions about the manner in which
the event is performed (e.g., Imagine

IDIOMATIC

again that the fluid comes out of the sealed

container. Do you think the fluid comes out
in a gentle manner or does it explode
out?). Table 1 presents the scenarios and
the three action questions for each of the
four source domains.
Procedure. Each participant was presented with a test booklet that contained
the experimental instructions along with all
the stimuli materials. The participants were
told that the purpose of the study was to
examine their intuitions about simple objects and events in the real world. The participants read the first scenario and then answered the three questions that followed.

MEANING

489

This was then done for the second, third,

and, finally, fourth source domains. Neither the experiment instructions or the experimenter said anything about this study
relating to linguistics or, more specifically,
to the meanings of idioms. The experiment
took approximately 15 min to complete.
Results and Discussion

The participants responses to each question were analyzed in the following manner.
First, each persons response to each question was analyzed for its general characteristics. For example, when a participant reported that his or her response to the cau-

TABLE 1
SCENARIOS AND ACTION QUESTIONS USED IN EXPERIMENT 1
Source domain
Fluid in c1container-Imagine
that you are looking at a container that is shaped like a cylinder. The top of
the container is sealed. The container is completely filled with some sort of fluid.
Describe something that would make the fluid explode out of the sealed container. (Causation)
Imagine that the fluid is heated to a high temperature and that the fluid comes out of the container. Do
you think that the fluid comes out on purpose (that is intentionally) due to its own will or does the fluid just
somehow get out unintentionally or by accident? (Intentional&y)
Imagine again that once heated to a very high temperature that the fluid came out of the sealed container.
Do you think that the fluid comes out of the sealed container in a gentle manner or does it explode out?
(Manner)
Fragile object in contniner-Imagine
that you have a container and inside of it is a very brittle, fragile
object.
Describe how the fragile objects inside the container might break or fall apart. (Causation)
Imagine now that something happens to the container and that this causes the fragile object inside to
break. Do you think the object falls apart intentionally through its own will or does it fall apart by accident?
(Intentional&y)
Imagine again that something happens to the container and that the fragile object breaks or falls apart. Do
you think the object falls apart gracefully and slowly or does it fall apart all at once? (Manner)

Small objects in container-Imagine

that you are looking at another container. The container is full of many
small pieces of something.
Describe something that would make the small pieces of material come out of the container. (Causation)
If the small pieces did somehow get out of container, do you think this would happen on purpose through
the will of the pieces or would this happen accidentally? (Intentional&y)
Imagine again that something happens to the container and that the small pieces of the material get out of
the container. Do these pieces get out slowly or do they somehow get out of the container quite quickly,
perhaps all at once? (Manner)
Taking control
of some object-Consider
the situation where you take some action in order to take some
object or event under your control.
What makes you exert control on the object or situation? (Causation)
Is the action you do to take something under your control done on purpose through your own desire or
does it just occur by accident? (Intentional&y)
Is the action you do to take something under, your control done gently and slowly or is it performed with
some authority and force? (Manner)

490

RAYMOND

W. GIBBS, JR.

sation question for the fluid in a container

scenario was if you heat the fluid to a high
temperature it might explode out, this was
scored as referring to heat or internal pressure as the main cause of the fluid escaping.
Two independent judges examined the response protocols and initially reached 96%
agreement as to how the individual participants responses to questions should be
scored. Subsequent discussion among the
judges produced complete agreement. In
the second stage of the analysis, the different general characteristics for peoples responses to each question across participants were tallied. From this, the single
most frequent answer to each question for
each source domain was determined. Table
2 presents the proportion of total responses
across all the participants that conformed
to the most frequently noted response for
each question in each source domain.
The responses listed in Table 2 generally
show that people were quite consistent in
their intuitions regarding the causation, intentionality,
and manner of events for the
four different source domains studied. On
average 89% of the participants responses
were in agreement collapsed across the
three types of questions and the four source

domains. This result reflects, for example,

the finding that people commonly
agree
that the probable cause of fluid escaping
out of a sealed container is some internal
pressure caused by the increase in the heat
of the fluid inside the container; that this
explosion is unintentional because containers and fluid have no intentional agency;
and that the explosion occurs in a violent
manner.
An analysis of these intersubjects proportions indicated no significant variability
across the different questions. The participants were in higher agreement in their responses to the questions for the fragile objects in a container domain than to the small
objects domain, z = 2.05, p < .05. All other
pairwise comparisons between the source
domains were not significant. More importantly, though, the degree of conformity in
the participants responses to each question
in each of the four source domains were
significantly
greater than chance, zs =
4.57,4.57,4.19,
ps < .Ol for the causation,
intentionality,
and manner questions, respectively, in the heated fluid domain, zs
= 5.80, 5.56, 5.80 with ps < .Ol for the
fragile object domain, zs = 5.18, 3.33,
2.84, ps < .05 for the small object in con-

TABLE
PROPORTION

Source domain

OF AGREEMENT

IN EXPERIMENT

Most frequent response

Fiuid in coniainer
Causation
Intentionality
Manner

Fluid is heated and/or under pressure

Escape of fluid is unintentional
Action is performed violently and abruptly

37
.81
.84

Fragile object in container

Causation
Intentionality
Manner

Some severe internal stress is applied

Breaking of object is unintentional
Action is performed forcefully and quickly

.97
.95
.97

Small objects in container

Causation
Intentionality
Manner

Pressure or stress is applied

Escape of objects is unintentional
Action is performed forcefully

.92
.71
.73

Taking control of some object

Causation
Intentionality
Manner

Desire to control object

Action is done intentionally
Action is performed with force

1.00
.97
34

491

IDIOMATIC MEANING

tamer domain, and zs = 6.17, 5.80, 4.19,

ps < .Ol for the taking control of some
object domain. Chance was conservatively
defined in these tests as SO, a proportion
that assumes participants could only give
two possible responses even though the answers to some questions could be potentially unlimited.
The important findings in this experiment
concern the similarity in peoples intuitions
about these source domains with other peoples understanding of the causation, intentionality, and manner of the actions in their
mental
images for idioms
(Gibbs
&
OBrien, 1990). For instance, the Gibbs and
OBrien studies showed that when people
imagined the phrases blow your stack and
j7ip your lid they consistently viewed the
cause of the stacks blowing and lids flipping
as being due to some internal pressure, that
these actions were unintentional
and performed in a forceful manner. As shown in
Experiment
1, people have similar intuitions about the objects and events in the
source domain of fluid in a sealed container. The responses for the other source
domains were also identical to that found
by Gibbs and OBrien in their participants
imagery protocols for revelation, control,
and insanity idioms (e.g., spill the beans,
crack

the whip,

lose your grip).

Most generally, then, the present findings clearly show how the metaphorical
mappings between source and target domains, which motivate the figurative meanings of idioms, preserve the critical, structural characteristics or cognitive topology
of the source domains. The question now is
whether people understand idioms as having complex meanings based on these entailments of their motivating
conceptual
metaphors.
EXPERIMENT

When people read an idiomatic sentence

such as John blew his stack when he heard
about Marys affair do they have any intuitions about the causes, intentionality,
and
manner in which John experienced his an-

ger? The conceptual view of idiomaticity

proposes that readers assume in this case
that John got angry because of some internal pressure, that he experienced his anger
unintentionally,
and that he expressed his
anger in an abrupt and explosive manner.
The data from Experiment
1 suggest that
each of these specific inferences about
Johns anger result from our understanding
of blow your stack as being motivated by
the source-to-target
domain mappings in
the conceptual metaphors the MIND IS A
CONTAINER
and ANGER IS HEATED
FLUID IN A CONTAINER.
But do readers draw these same inferences about
Johns anger when they read a literal paraphrase of the blow your stack idiom such as
when they see the phrase John got very angry when

he heard

about Marys

affair?

This literal phrase is not motivated by conceptual metaphor in the way blow your
stack seems to be. It is less likely that readers would draw the same kind of inferences
when they read literal phrases such as John
got very angry than when they read idiomatic expressions such as John blew his
stack.

The aim of Experiment

2 was to test
these predictions. Participants read stories
that ended in either an idiomatic phrase or
some literal equivalent expression. These
stories were written in a neutral fashion so
as to not give any contextual information
about the causes, intentionality , or manner
of the main action alluded to by the idiom or
its literal paraphrase. Following each story,
participants
rated their agreement with
three assertions regarding the story protagonists actions. These assertions stated
some possibility about the causation of the
action (e.g., John got angry because he
felt some internal pressure), the intentionality of the action (e.g., John unintentionally expressed his anger), and the manner
in which the story action was performed
(e.g., John expressed his anger in an
abrupt, forceful manner).
The participants task was to read each assertion and
rate how much they agreed with it given

492

RAYMOND

what they had just read. The main prediction was that the participants would give
higher ratings when they read idiomatic
phrases than when they read literal paraphrases because idioms have more complex
and exact meanings that specify information about the causation, intentionality,
and
manner in which certain actions are performed.
Method

Subjects. Forty-six undergraduate

students from the same population used in Experiment 1 participated in this study.
Stimuli and design. Sixteen idioms were
selected from the stimuli used by Gibbs and
OBrien (1990). Four of these phrases referred to the idea of revelation (with a literal
paraphrase of to reveal the secret), four
to anger (to get very angry), four to insanity (to go insane), and four to imposing control or authority (to exert control). The various literal paraphrases had
been previously rated as being the best possible, simple, definitions of these idioms
(Gibbs & Nayak, 1989; Gibbs & OBrien,
1990). Each of the four human events referred to by these phrases could be described by different conceptual metaphors
that gave rise to very specific entailments
about the meanings of the idioms. Table 3
presents a list of the idioms and their literal
paraphrases.
The idioms and their literal paraphrases
were placed at the end of short story contexts. These stories, ranging from three to
five sentences, were written in a neutral
manner and did not specify any information
about the causes, intentionality,
and manner of the main story actions. Three assertions were written to follow each story context. Each assertion explicitly stated one of
the entailments (causation, intentionality,
and manner) from those suggested by Experiment 1 (see Table 2) and by the Gibbs
and OBrien (1990) findings. For example,
in stories regarding anger, the assertion
states something
about
causation (e.g.,

W. GIBBS, JR.
TABLE 3
FINAL PHRASES USED IN EXPERIMENT 2
Anger

idioms

Blow your stack

Hit the ceiling
Flip your lid
Lose your cool
To get very angry-literal
Exerting

control

paraphrase

idioms

Crack the whip

Lay down the law
Call the shots
Wear the pants
To exert control-literal
insanity

paraphrase

idioms

Lose your marbles

Go to pieces
Bounce off the walls
Lose your grip
To go insane-literal
Revelation

paraphrase

idioms

Spili the beans

Let the cat out of the bag
Blow the whistle
Blow the lid off
To reveal the secret--literal

paraphrase

Rick got very angry because he was under

a great deal of pressure), intentionality
(e.g., Rick got very angry without intending to do so), and manner (e.g., Rick got
angry in a very forceful manner). Table 4
presents examples of the scenarios and the
three assertions for each of the four kinds of
human events.
The stimuli were divided into four counterbalanced lists of materials. Each list contained eight stories, four ending with idiomatic phrases and four ending with literal
paraphrases. Across the four lists of materials, equal numbers of participants
saw
each scenario with its two different final
phrases.
Procedure. The participants
received a
booklet that contained the experimental instructions
and all stimulus materials. The
instructions
asked people to read each
story and then to rate their agreement with

IDIOMATIC
TABLE
EXAMPLES

OF SCENARIOS

493

MEANING
4

AND QUESTIONS

FOR EXPERIMENT

Revelation scenario
John heard that Bill and Jane were having an affair. Both Bill and Jane were married to other people.
John was surprised when he found out about the affair. When be went home that night, he saw his wife and
spilled the beans.
or
reveal the secret.
(a) John told his wife because he felt some pressure within himself to do so.
(b) John intentionally told his wife about the affair.
(c) John told his wife very quickly and forcefully.
Anger scenario
Sally was preparing for a big dinner party. She had to do a great deal of cooking. Her husband was
supposed to help, but he was real late getting home from work. When her husband strolled in 10 minutes
before the party whistling and smiling,
Sally blew her stack.
or
Sally got very angry.
(a) Sally got very angry because she was under a great deal of pressure.
(b) Sally got very angry without intending to do so.
(c) Sally got very angry in a forceful manner.
Insanity scenario
Jane was a working mother with three children. She was also a lawyer whose husband worked in
business. After many years of being successful at both home and at work,
Jane began losing her grip.
or
Jane started going insane.
(a) Jane started going crazy because she was under a great deal of pressure.
(b) Jane started going crazy without intending to do so.
(c) Jane started going crazy all at once in a forceful manner.
Exerting control scenario
During the summer Steve worked as a lifeguard at a pool. His job had a good deal of responsibility. Steve
had to look after the safety of all of the children using the pool. One afternoon some young teenage boys
were making trouble. They were jumping on the shoulders of unsuspecting swimmers. Steve went over to
the boys and
cracked the whip.
or
exerted his authority.
(a) Steve did what he did to take control and impose his authority,
(b) Steve did what he did intentionally.
(c) Steve did what he did in a forceful manner.

each of the three statements presented below each story. Participants were told to
give their agreement ratings using a 7-point
scale with 7 indicating that they strongly
agreed with the assertion and 1 indicating
that they strongly disagreed with the statement. The participants were encouraged to
use all parts of the 7-point scale in making

their ratings. The task took participants

about 20 min to complete.
Results and Discussion
Table 5 presents the mean agreement ratings for each experimental condition. The
overall standard deviation for these ratings

494

RAYMOND

MEAN

TABLE
5
RATINGS IN EXPERIMENT
Final

Question
Causation
Intentional&y
Manner

type

Idioms
4.93
4.49
4.22

W.

GIBBS,

JR.

aphors that provide part of the link between

idioms and their figurative meanings.

phrase

EXPERIMENT

Literal
paraphrase
4.33
3.77
3.60

was 4.74. Higher ratings indicate more

agreement with the idea stated by each assertion.
Analyses of variance on these ratings
were conducted both when subjects were
the random factor (F,) and when items were
the random variable (F,). These analyses
indicated that the participants gave higher
ratings overall having read the idiom
phrases than when they read the literal
paraphrases, F,(1,45) = 32.51, p < .OOl,
F,(1,15) = 12.32,~ < .OOl. There were also
significant differences in the ratings participants gave to the different questions,
F,(2,90) = 9.87,~ < .OOl, F,(2,30) = 5.33,
p < .Ol. The interaction between these two
variables did not approach significance in
either the subject or item analyses. Further
analysis of the individual means using Newman-Keuls
tests showed that the participants were in greater agreement with each
type of assertion when they read idioms
than when they read literal phrases (p < .05
for each comparison across both subjects
and items).
These findings show that idioms have
more specific, complex meanings than do
their assumed literal paraphrases. Readers
infer more specific entailments about the
causes, intentionality,
and manner of human actions when they read idiomatic
phrases than when they read literal paraphrases of these figurative expressions. As
suggested by Gibbs and OBrien (1990) and
the data from Experiment
1, the specific
inferences readers draw when they read idioms are motivated by the conceptual met-

The differences in meanings between idioms and their literal paraphrases noted in
Experiment 2 might not have anything to do
with conceptual metaphors, but might simply be due to the meanings of the different
words in these expressions (cf. Kreuz &
Graesser, 1991). For instance, people might
draw specific inferences about the causation, intentionality,
and manner of revealing secrets when they read spill the beans
because of the complex semantic entailments of the verb spill and not because spill
the beans is motivated by the conceptual
metaphors the MIND IS A CONTAINER
and IDEAS ARE PHYSICAL
ENTITIES.
At the same time, people might not draw
the same complex inferences about the
meaning of the literal phrase reveal the secret because the verb reveal does not entail
anything about the causes, intentionality,
and manner of action in which things are
revealed. This alternative hypothesis for
the findings in Experiment 2 has some appeal because, after all, many ordinary verbs
such as borrow, float, hurry, and discover
have varying, complex semantic entailments, though this does not necessarily imply that they are structured by underlying
metaphors.
Experiment 3 investigated the possibility
that the specific inferences people draw
about the meanings of idioms is due to the
entailments
of these phrases individual
words, particularly the verbs in each idiom.
Participants were presented with the verbs
in ail the idioms and literal phrases used as
stimuli in Experiment 2. The participants
task was to answer questions about the entailments of each verb, specifically the entailments regarding the causation, intentionality,
and manner of the action described by each verb. For instance, for
causation the participants were asked to respond to the following type of question:

IDIOMATIC

When X spills something, does this necessarily mean that the action was caused by
some pressure? For intentionality
the question was: When X spills something, does
this necessarily
mean that the action was
done intentionally?
For manner, the question was: When X spills something, does
this necessarily
mean that the action was
done in a forceful manner? These questions

referred to the entailments of the conceptual metaphors as demonstrated in Experiments 1 and 2. The participants gave YesNo ratings on a 7-point scale to each question both when idiom verbs were included
(e.g., spill, blew, lays down) and when literal phrase verbs were mentioned (e.g., reveal, gets, enforces).
The alternative hypothesis predicts that people should give
higher ratings to these questions for idiom
verbs than when they read literal phrase
verbs. However, the conceptual view of idiomaticity suggests that the specific entailments for idiomatic
phrases arises from
their metaphorical
foundations
and not
solely from their specific, isolated lexical
items. Consequently,
the participants
should not give higher ratings to the idiom
verbs than to the literal phrases verbs.
Methods
Subjects. Forty undergraduate
students
from the same subject population used in
the previous studies participated in this experiment .
Stimuli and design. The initial verb,
sometimes verb particle (e.g., lay down)
from each idiom and literal paraphrase used
a stimuli in Experiment 2 was inserted into
questions regarding the causation, intentionality, and manner of action referred to
by the verb. The above discussion gives an
example of each type of question (i.e., causation, intentionality,
and manner). These
questions mentioned the entailments of idioms studied in Experiment 2. Each question type was identical across the different
verbs with the exception of the verbs or
verb particles themselves. Due to the repe-

495

MEANING

tition of some verbs in the idioms, there

were only 13 idiom verbs and four literal
paraphrase verbs.
Procedure.
The participants were presented with a booklet containing the instructions and all stimulus materials. The
instructions specifically stated the following: This experiment examines your understanding of the meanings of different
verbs in English. In particular, you will be
asked to judge the entailments of different
verbs. Entailments
are specific meanings
that are directly associated with a word or
sentence. For example, the sentence John
killed Mary entails that Mary died. Similarly, I saw a boy entails I saw a person.
Most generally, a word or sentence X entails Y if the truth of Y follows necessarily
from the truth of X. For this reason, the
sentence John boiled an egg entails that
John cooked an egg, But John cooked an
egg does not entail that John boiled an
egg because there are many ways to cook
eggs without boiling them.
Presented below are a series of statements of the general form When X verbs
something, does this necessarily mean that
the action was Y? Your task is to read
each statement and rate on a 7-point scale
the degree to which you think the answer is
Yes or No.
The rating scales goes
from 7 which means that you definitely believe the answer is Yes to 1 which means
that you definitely believe the answer is
No. A rating of 3, 4, or 5 suggests that
you do not really know whether the answer
is Yes or No. Please feel free to use
the entire scale in making your ratings.
The task took around 10 min to complete.
Results

and Discussion

The mean ratings averaged across the

participants for the two types of verbs (i.e.,
idiom and literal) for each type of question
are presented in Table 6. The overall standard deviation for these ratings was 4.49.
Higher ratings reflect the participants
agreements with the premises of the differ-

496

RAYMOND
TABLE
MEAN

RATINGS

IN EXPERIMENT

Final phrase
Question type
Causation
Intentionality
Manner

Idioms

Literal
paraphrase

2.30
2.50
1.85

2.45
2.38
1.86

ent questions (e.g., that the verb spill entails that the action was done intentionally).
Preliminary analyses showed that the effect of the different lists of materials was
not significant, nor did it interact with any
other variable. Subsequent analyses collapsed across this factor. Analyses of variances on the rating data showed that there
were no differences in the overall ratings
for the idiom and literal phrase verbs,
F,( 1,39) < 1, F2( 1,12) < 1. There were significant differences in the ratings for the
three questions, F,(2,78) = 6.87, p < .Ol,
F,(2,25) = 4.43, p < .Ol. The interaction of
verb type and question type was not reliable, Ft(2,78) = 1.33,~ > .lO, F,(2,25) < 1.
Further analysis of the individual means
using Newman-Keuls
tests indicated that
participants gave higher ratings for both the
causation and intentionality
questions than
for the manner questions (ps < .05 for each
comparison
across both subjects and
items). The ratings for the idiom and literal
phrase verbs, however, did not differ for
any of the three questions. These data contrast with the findings of Experiment
2
where participants
ratings were significantly higher for idioms than for literal
paraphrases given each type of question.
Nevertheless,
rating whether specific
verbs necessarily mean something, as was
done in the present study, is different from
asking participants to rate the appropriateness of various entailments for entire idiomatic and literal expressions as was done
in Experiment 2. It could be the case that
the different verbs in the idioms and literal

W. GIBBS, JR.

phrases do not necessarily have specific

meanings, yet these verbs may well suggest
different interpretations.
To check for this
possibility, a different group of 24 undergraduate students from the University of
California,
Santa Cruz participated
in a
study to replicate the main findings of the
present experiment. The participants in this
replication were asked to rate, again on a
7-point scale, whether the different verbs
from the idioms and literal phrases suggested the specific inferences about the
causation, intentionality,
and manner of the
action described. The data for this replication study are presented in Table 7.
Analyses of variance on these data
showed that there were no significant differences in the ratings for the idioms and
literal paraphrases, F,(1,23) < 1, F,(1,12) <
1. There were, once again, significant differences in the ratings for the different
questions,
F,(2,46)
= 4.83, p < .Ol,
F,(2,25) = 3.19, p < .05. The interaction of
verb type and type of question was not significant, F,(2,46) < 1, F,(2,25) < 1. These
findings indicate that changing the instructions on how to rate the meanings or implications of verbs does not produce any notable difference in peoples intuitions about
the meanings of the individual verbs from
idioms and their literal paraphrases studied
in Experiment 2. Overall, the results of Experiment 3 do not support the alternative
hypothesis that the specific meanings of idioms, as shown by the data in Experiment
2, were due solely to the entailments of the
individual verbs in these idioms.

TABLE
MEAN

RATINGS

IN REPLICATION

OF EXPERIMENT

Final phrase
Question type
Causation
Intentionality
Manner

Idioms

Literal
paraphrase

2.36
2.41
1.90

2.51
2.33
1.81

IDIOMATIC

EXPERIMENT

Experiment 4 attempted to provide further evidence showing that idioms are not
equivalent in meaning to their literal paraphrases. Participants read stories that described different human events, such as revealing secrets, getting angry, losing control of themselves, and going insane. These
stories contained information
about the
causes of the event, the intentionality
of the
action performed by each storys protagonist, and the manner in which the actions
were performed. Some stories depicted this
information in a manner that was consistent
with the entailments of particular conceptual metaphors (the no-violation contexts),
while other stories separately violated one
of these entailments
(causation violation
contexts, intentionality
violation contexts,
and manner violation contexts). At the end
of each story, participants were presented
with either an idiomatic expression (e.g.,
spill the beans) or a literal paraphrase of the
idiom (e.g., reveal the secret). The participants read and rated the appropriateness of
each final phrase for that context.
The conceptual view of idiomaticity predicts that participants should rate the idioms (e.g., spill the beans) as being more
appropriate than their literal paraphrases
(e.g., reveal the secret) in the no-violation
stories. If people draw specific inferences
about the meanings of idioms, then readers
should judge these idioms as being particularly appropriate in contexts that explicitly
described these inferences. However, if
readers view idioms as having very specific
figurative interpretations,
due in part to the
conceptual metaphors that motivate their
meanings, they should also judge idioms as
being far less appropriate in contexts that
explicitly
contradicted
or violated these
meanings (e.g., the different violation contexts). Literal paraphrases are not as constrained in their meanings as are idiomatic
phrases and should be more appropriate in
violation story contexts than is the case

497

MEANING

with idioms. Overall, then, the rating data

should give evidence of an interaction between type of final phrase and type of context.
Methods
Subjects.

Twenty-eight
undergraduate
students from the same population used in
the previous studies participated in this experiment .
Stimuli and design. The experiment incorporated a 4 (Context condition) X 2 (Final phrase) completely crossed factorial design. Sixteen stories were written that correctly depicted all three entailments
for
each conceptual domain (four stories for
anger, four for revelation, four for control,
and four for insanity). These 16 stories
were then individually altered to contradict
or violate one of the three metaphorical entailments to produce a causation violation
story, an intentionality
violation story, and
a manner violation story. The 64 stories
were then crossed with the two types of
final phrases (idioms or literal paraphrases)
to produce a total of 128 stories. These
were then divided into eight counterbalanced lists of stimuli such that, across the
entire experiment, an equal number of participants saw each final phrase in each of
the four context conditions (a Latin square
design). Table 8 presents an example of
each violation context for one of the revelation idioms.
Procedure.
The participants were randomly assigned to receive one of the eight
booklets that contained the instructions and
stimuli material. The participants task was
to read each story and rate on a scale of 1 to
7 the degree to which the final phrase fit the
preceding story context (with 1 indicating
does not fit with the context and 7 indicating fits extremely well with the context). The task took approximately 20 min
to complete.
Results

and Discussion

The mean appropriateness

ratings for
each type of final phrase in each type of

498

RAYMOND

W. GIBBS, JR.

TABLE 8
EXAMPLESOF~TIMULI INEXPERIMENT~
No-violation story
John heard some interesting gossip about Paul and Mary. Even though Paul and Mary were married to
other people, they had recently started having a passionate atfair. John was very surprised when he found
out about the affair. Although he promised not to tell anyone, the knowledge that Paul and Mary were
deeply in love was too much for John to contain. John kept quiet about it for over a week, but one day
John called up another friend who knew Paul and Mary and accidently blurted out what he knew. The
friend commented to John that he had really
spilled the beans.
or
revealed the secret.
Causation violation story
John heard some interesting gossip about Paul and Mary. Even though Paul and Mary were married to
other people, they had recently started having a passionate affair. John was very surprised when he found
out about the affair. John fully intended never to say a word to anyone. The fact that he heard about the
affair caused him no difticulty and he felt no urge to tell anyone. One day when John was talking to
someone who knew Paul and Mary he accidentally said something about what he knew.
John spilled the beans.
or
John revealed the secret.
Intentionality violation story
John heard some interesting gossip about Paul and Mary. Even though Paul and Mary were married to
other people, they had recently started having a passionate atfair. John was very surprised when he found
out about the affair. John fully intended never to say a word to anyone. John kept quiet about it for over a
week, but eventually the pressure got to him. One day he was talking to someone who knew Paul and
Mary, when John purposefully and intentionally said something about what he knew. The friend commented
to John that he had really
spilled the beans.
or
revealed the secret.
Manner violation story
John heard some interesting gossip about Paul and Mary. Even though Paul and Mary were married to
other people, they had recently started having a passionate affair. John was very surprised when he found
out about the affair. Although he promised not to tell anyone, the information was too much for John to
contain. Soon John thought hed explode if he didnt tell someone. So, John called up another friend who
knew Paul and Mary. He then calmly and quietly explained what he knew.
John spilled the beans.
or
John revealed the secret.

context are presented in Table 9. The overall standard deviation for these ratings was
.98. Note that higher ratings indicate that
the phrase was more appropriate given a
particular context.
Initial analyses showed that the effect of
the list was not significant, nor did it interact with any other variables. Subsequent
analyses collapsed across this variable.
Analyses of variance on participants
ratings showed that people found the literal
paraphrases more appropriate
across all

contexts than were the idioms, F,(1,27) =

4.46, p < .05, F,(1,15) = 3.37, p < .lO.
Moreover, there was significant variation in
participants
ratings of the different contexts, F,(3,81) = 10.22,~ < .Ol, F,(3,45) =
6.81, p < .Ol. Most importantly,
the interaction between final phrase and type of
context was also reliable, F,(3,81) = 7.87,
p < .Ol, F,(3,45) = 4.56, p < .Ol.
Further analyses on the individual means
using Newman-Keuls
tests indicated that
participants gave somewhat higher ratings

IDIOMATIC

TABLE
MEAN

APPROPRIATENESS

RATINGS

IN EXPERIMENT

499

MEANING

Final phrase
Context

Idioms

Literal
paraphrase

No violation
Causation violation
Intentionality violation
Manner violation

5.40
4.54
4.52
3.10

5.03
5.22
4.85
4.51

to idioms than they did to literal paraphrases in the no-violation contexts (p <
.lO across subjects, p > .lO across items).
This provides some support for the idea
that people find idioms more appropriate to
use in situations where the causation, intentionality, and manner in which some event
is described matches the underlying conceptual metaphor that motivates the meaning of the idiom. Participants also rated idioms in the no-violation contexts as being
significantly more appropriate than in any
of the violation contexts 0, < .05 for each
comparison across both subjects and
items). However, participants found the literal phrases to be no less appropriate in the
causation and intentionality violation conditions than in the no-violation contexts. It
appears that, contrary to idioms, literal
paraphrases are reasonable to use in almost
any type of context, regardless of the cause
and intentionality of the event described.
The participants gave somewhat lower ratings to the literal paraphrases in the manner
violation contexts than in the no-violation
condition (p < .lO across subjects, p > .lO
across items). Finally, people gave significantly lower appropriateness rating to idioms in the causation and manner violation
contexts than they did to literal paraphrases
in the same contexts 0, < .05 for all three
comparisons across both subjects and
items). The difference between the ratings
for idioms and literal paraphrases for the
intentionality violation contexts was not
statistically reliable.
These findings further demonstrate that
idioms such as spill the beans are not equiv-

alent in meaning to their literal paraphrases

such as reveal the secret. Idiomatic phrases
have very specific figurative meanings that
results from the entailments of the underlying conceptual metaphors that motivate
their figurative interpretations. Literal
phrases, such as reveal the secret, are not
motivated by the same conceptual metaphors and consequently are less specific in
meaning. For this reason, literal phrases
are more appropriate to use in a variety of
situations than are idiom phrases which are
more specific in their meanings.
EXPERIMENT

It is reasonable to suppose that the results of the previous study might be due to
the poor quality of the literal paraphrases
rather than to any essential differences in
the meanings of idioms and their literal
paraphrases. Of course, any idiom might be
adequately paraphrased with a very long
definition containing many sentences that
spell out all of its specific entailments. But
most theories assume that the meanings of
idioms can be represented by short phrases
or single words (Cruse, 1986; Palmer,
1981), and idiom dictionaries certainly define idioms in this way. The paraphrases
used in the previous study came directly
from those judged by participants in both
Gibbs and OBrien (1990) and Nayak and
Gibbs (1990) as being the best possible literal definitions for these expressions,
Nonetheless, these paraphrases could perhaps be altered to better reflect an idioms
complex meaning. For instance, the idiom
blow your stack might be better paraphrased as to react very angrily instead
of to get very angry. Experiment 5 replicated the previous study using the same
story contexts and idioms, but with a revised set of paraphrases. The revised paraphrases attempted to capture more information about the manner in which the actions described were performed (e.g., how
people get angry, reveal secrets, go insane,
and to exert authority).

500

RAYMOND

Methods
Subjects. Twenty-four subjects from the
same population used in the previous studies participated in this experiment.
Stimuli, design, and procedure. The
stimuli, design, and procedure in this study
were identical to these used in Experiment
4 with the exception that the literal paraphrases were revised. Each paraphrase was
altered by changing or adding a few words
that better captured some of the information about the causation, intentionality,
or
manner in which the action described by
each idiom was performed. For anger the
new phrase was to react very angry, for
revelation the literal phrase was to quickly
reveal the secret, for insanity the phrase
was to go quickly insane, and for control
the literal paraphrase was toforcefully take
control. These new literal paraphrases were
somewhat longer than their corresponding
idiom phrases, unlike the situations in Experiments 2, 3, and 4.
Results and Discussion

Table 10 presents the mean appropriateness ratings for both idioms and the literal
paraphrases in the different contexts. The
overall standard deviation for these ratings
was .91. Again, higher ratings indicated
that the phrase was more appropriate given
its context.
Once again, preliminary analyses showed
no effect of list and the fact that this variable did not interact with any other factor.
Subsequent analyses collapsed across this
variable. Analyses of variance on the parTABLE10
APPROPRIATENESS RATINGS FOR EXPERIMENT 5
Final phrase
Context

Idioms

Literal
paraphrase

No violation
Causation violation
Intentionality violation
Manner violation

5.27
4.48
4.65
3.78

4.84
5.01
5.12
4.61

W. GIBBS, JR.

ticipants ratings showed the literal paraphrases were viewed as being more appropriate across all contexts than were the idioms, F,(1,23) = 5.06, p < .05, F,(l,lS) =
4.47, p < .05. Moreover, there was significant variation in participants ratings of the
different contexts, Fi(3,69) = 8.52, p < .Ol,
F,(3,45) = 4.66, p < .05. The interaction
between final phrase and type of context
was also reliable, F,(3,69) = 5.75, p < .Ol,
F,(3,45) = 3.84, p -=c.05.

Further analyses on the individual means

using Newman-Keuls
tests indicated that
participants gave higher ratings to idioms
than they did to literal paraphrases in the
no-violation contexts (p < .05 across subjects and items). People also rated idioms in
the no-violation
contexts as being significantly more appropriate than in any of the
violation contexts (p < .05 for each comparison across subjects and items). And
again, the participants
found the literal
phrases to be no less appropriate in the causation and intentionality
violation conditions than in the no-violation contexts. Finally, the participants gave lower ratings to
idioms in all three violation contexts than
they did to literal paraphrases in the same
contexts (p < .05 for each comparison
across subjects, p < .05 for causation and
manner violations context, and p > .lO for
intentionality
violation
contexts across
items).
The pattern of results in this study is
nearly identical to that found with the set of
literal paraphrases used in the previous experiment. It appears then that the differences noted between the appropriateness of
idioms and their literal paraphrases in Experiment 4 were not due to any particular
idiosyncrasies
of the brief literal paraphrases employed as stimuli.
EXPERIMENT 6

Experiment
6 employed
a self-paced
reading time task to examine processing
differences in comprehending
idiomatic
phrases and literal paraphrases in story
contexts that either maintained or violated

IDIOMATIC

the entailments of different conceptual metaphors. Participants read the same stories
and final phrases used as stimuli in Experiment 4. Reading times for the final phrases
should vary in an inverse pattern to the rating data obtained in Experiments 4 and 5.
Participants should find it easier to comprehend idiom phrases in story contexts that
mentioned all of the entailments of the conceptual metaphors
that motivate
these
phrases figurative meanings than when
they read idioms in contexts that contradicted one of these entailments. Thus, participants should find it easier to process an
idiom such as blow your stuck in a story
context with causation, intentionality,
and
manner entailments that are consistent with
the ANGER IS HEATED
FLUID IN A
CONTAINER
than to read this same idiom
in contexts that violated one of the entailments. On the other hand, people should
find literal sentences no more difficult to
process in the various violation contexts
than in the no-violation
stories. Overall,
there should be evidence of an interaction
in reading times between type of final
phrase and type of violation context.
Methods

Twenty-eights undergraduates
from the same population used in the previous studies participated in this study.
Stimuli and design. The stimuli and design of this study are identical to that employed in Experiment 4. The literal paraphrases from Experiment 4, rather than Experiment 5, were used so as to be closer in
length with the corresponding
idiom
phrases. The idioms and their corresponding literal paraphrases did not significantly
differ in length as measured by the total
number of characters.
Procedure.
The participants
were randomly assigned to read one of the eight
counterbalanced
lists of stories. The scenarios were presented one line at a time on
the CRT that is under the control of an IBM
Personal System/2 Model 30 computer system. The participants
were instructed to
Subjects.

501

MEANING

read each line of the story as it appeared

and to press a designated button as soon as
they understood it. When the designated
key was pressed the next sentence of the
scenario
appeared.
Participants
read
through the stories in this line-by-line manner until they read the final phrase (either
an idiom or a literal paraphrase). The participants were instructed to give their comprehension responses as quickly as possible, but to be sure that they understood
each line before pressing the designated
button. Response latencies were measured
from the onset of the phrase to when the
participant pressed the response key. Five
hundred milliseconds
following comprehension of the final phrase, a simple YesNo question was presented that the participants answered using the designated keys.
The question concerned some detail in the
story to ensure that the participants followed the experimental
instructions. Following the Yes-No response to the question, the first line of the next story appeared. The stories were presented in a
different random order for each participant.
The experiment took about 20 min to complete .
Results

and Discussion

All comprehension latencies longer than

three standard deviations from the mean
were truncated (less than 2%). These outliers represent cases in which experimental
instructions could not have been followed,
as when participants
attention wandered
from the task. Only those comprehension
responses that were followed by correct answers to the Yes-No questions were included in the analyses (98% of all the data).
Table 11 presents the mean reading times
for the two kinds of final phrases in the different story contexts. The overall standard
deviation for these reading times was 1072.
Preliminary
analyses indicated that list
was not a significant factor, nor did it interact with any other variable. The following
analyses reported collapsed across this factor. Analyses of variance on the reading

502

RAYMOND

W. GIBBS, JR.

TABLE 11
MEAN READING TIMES IN EXPERIMENT 6
Final phrase
Context

Idioms

Literal
paraphrase

No violation
Causation violation
Intentionality violation
Manner violation

2249
2623
2689
3005

2596
2444
2636
2713

Note. Times in milliseconds.

time data revealed a significant main effect

of context, F,(3,174) = 5.96, p < .OOl;
F,(3,45) = 4.22, p < .05. The effect of final
phrase did not approach significance, both
Fs < 1, although the interaction between
violation
context and final phrase was
highly reliable, F,(3,174) = 4.00, p < .Ol;
F,(3,45) = 2.98, p < .05.

Further examination
of the individual
means using Newman-Keuls
tests indicated that participants were faster to read
idioms than literal paraphrases in the noviolation contexts (p < .Ol across subjects
and items). This result is consistent with
the findings of previous research on processing differences between idioms and literal phrases (Gibbs, 1980, 1986; Gibbs &
Gonzales, 1985; Gibbs, Nayak, & Cutting,
1989; Swinney & Cutler, 1979). More specifically, though, the present data suggest
that people find idioms easier to process in
situations where the causation, intentionality, and manner in which some event is
described matches the entailments of the
underlying conceptual metaphors that motivate the meanings of these idioms. Participants also found idioms easier to read in
the no-violation contexts than in any of the
other violation scenarios (p < .Ol for each
contrast across both subjects and items). At
the same time, people took more time to
read idioms in each of the violation contexts than they did to read literal paraphrases in the same stories, significantly so
for the causation and manner violation contexts @ < .05 for both contrasts across subjects and items). The literal paraphrases, on

the other hand, were not significantly easier

to read in no-violation contexts than in either the causation or intentionality
violation contexts. In fact, people took somewhat less time to read the literal paraphrases in the causation violation contexts
than when seen in the no-violation stories
(p < .lO across subjects, p > .lO across
items). The differences in reading times for
literal phrases in the no-violation and intentionality violation contexts and for the noviolation and manner violation contexts
were not statistically reliable.
The results of Experiment 6 indicate that
idioms and their literal paraphrases are differentially easy to process depending on
how well the discourse context encodes information about the causation, intentionality, and manner of human events to which
idioms refer. When certain human events,
such as, getting angry, revealing a secret,
going insane, and exerting control, are conceptualized in a manner that is consistent
with entailments of certain conceptual metaphors, processing of idioms that are motivated by these same conceptual metaphors
is easily accomplished. Literal paraphrases
are more flexible in meaning, since they are
not constrained by conceptual metaphors in
the same way as are idioms. Consequently,
people find literal paraphrases of idioms
roughly equivalent in difficulty to process
in a variety of discourse situations.
GENERAL

DISCUSSION

Traditional
theories of idiomaticity
assume that idioms are qualitatively different
from metaphorical language, partly because
metaphorical
expressions are irreducible
and resist paraphrase into equivalent literal
language. Idioms are mostly viewed as
dead metaphors
with simple figurative
meanings that are arbitrarily
determined
and best captured by short literal phrases.
My contention is that many idioms possess
a similar irresistibility to simple literal paraphrase as do verbal metaphors, precisely
because the figurative meanings of idioms
are nartiallv motivated
bv metanhorical

IDIOMATIC

mappings of conceptual knowledge from

various sources to target domains.
The results of the present experiments indicate that idioms referring
to human
events, such as, getting angry, exerting
control, revealing secrets, and going crazy,
differ considerably
from literal
paraphrases. Experiment
1 showed that peoples intuitions about the source domains of
conceptual metaphors that motivate the
meanings
of particular
idioms closely
match their understandings of what these
idioms really mean. Such data support the
idea that the mappings of source-to-target
domain information
in conceptual metaphors preserve the structural characteristics or cognitive topology of the source domains (Lakoff, 1990). The invariant sourceto-target domain mappings in conceptual
metaphors do not mean that some concepts
are never understood in their own terms.
There could very well be some structures in
our conceptualizations
of human events,
such as, for getting angry, revealing secrets, going insane, taking control, and so
forth, that are independent of metaphor.
This research strategy of predicting idiomatic meaning, based on peoples intuitions
of various source domains, differs from that
employed by cognitive linguists who make
inferences about the conceptual foundations of meaning from analyses of linguistic
expressions (cf. Kovecses, 1986; Lakoff,
1987). My work takes advantage of the cognitive linguistic analyses to pick idioms and
source domains that are likely to be motivated by conceptual metaphor. But the data
from this first study are important because
they provide an independent, non-linguistic
way of partially predicting what specific
meanings some idioms are likely to possess, based on the analyses of certain metaphorical concepts in long-term memory.
Experiments 2 and 3 demonstrated that
people view idioms as having more complex meanings than they do literal paraphrases of idioms. These studies only examined three of the entailments that arise
from conceptual mappings of source-to-

MEANING

503

target domain information (e.g., causation,

intentionality,
and manner) and might actually underestimate
the true complexity of
idiomatic meaning. Earlier studies suggest
that idioms might differ in other ways from
simple literal expressions such as in the reversibility and consequences of human actions (Gibbs & OBrien, 1990). The present
data should therefore be viewed as proving
a lower limit as to what idioms really mean.
Simple literal phrases do not possess the
same kind of specificity about the causation, intentionality,
and manner of the human actions referred to by the idioms considered here.
Experiments
4 through 6 showed that
people find idioms as more appropriate and
easier to understand when they are seen in
discourse contexts that are consistent with
the various entailments of these phrases.
Previous research revealed that the metaphorical structure of discourse can make
some idioms more appropriate to use than
others even when these different idioms
share the same general figurative meaning.
Thus, blow your stack and bite your head
off are differentially
appropriate
in discourse depending on whether the persons
anger is metaphorically
conceptualized
as
ANGER IS HEATED FLUID IN A CONTAINER
or ANGER
IS ANIMAL
BEHAVIOR
(Nayak & Gibbs, 1990). The
present studies more precisely show that
idiom use and comprehension
varies depending on how discourse encodes information about the entailments of the conceptual metaphors that partially motivate why
these idioms mean what they do. For this
reason, blow your stack and jlip your lid
might not be appropriate to use in all contexts referring to people getting very angry.
But they are certainly appropriate to use
and easy to understand when spoken in situations where the cause of someones anger is some internal pressure, where the expression of anger is unintentional,
and
when someones anger is conveyed to others in a very explosive, abrupt manner. Literal paraphrases, such as get very angry,

504

RAYMOND

W.

GIBBS,

JR.

can be more appropriately

used in many
plenty of basic conventional metaphors that
different kinds of situations because these are alive, certainly enough to show that
literal phrases are less specific in their
what is conventional and fixed need not be
meanings.
dead (Lakoff & Turner, 1989).
The fact that some idioms have complex
The present studies, along with those of
figurative interpretation
that are partially
Gibbs and Nayak (1990) and Gibbs and
motivated
by metaphorical
schemes of OBrien (1990), clearly demonstrate that
thought refutes the assumption that all idi- the meanings of idioms are not arbitrary
oms are simply dead metaphors.
Al- and dead, but are motivated by metaphorithough the present studies examined a cal schemes of thought that are very much
small number of idioms and literal para- part of our everyday thinking and reasonphrases, there are good reasons to suspect ing. These same metaphorical schemes of
that these results can be generalized to ac- thought explain the systematicity in other,
count for hundreds, perhaps, thousands of non-idiomatic
expressions that are ubiquiidioms in English. Cognitive linguistic stud- tous in everyday speech. For instance: His
ies of idiomatic language suggest that many pent-up anger welled up inside of him; My
formulaic phrases in a wide variety of lan- anger kept building up inside me; She got
guages have fairly transparent metaphoric
all steamed up; and Im fuming are not independent literal expressions, perhaps reroots. Of course, there are many idiomatic
phrases that are truly dead in the sense flecting different dead metaphors, but corthat their historical roots are completely
respond to the MIND IS A CONTAINER
opaque to contemporary speakers. But it is and ANGER IS HEATED
FLUID IN A
terribly misleading to lump all idioms to- CONTAINER
metaphors which motivate
gether into one theoretical
category, for the meanings of various idiomatic phrases
these expressions differ on a variety of his- such as hit the ceiling, jlip your lid, and
torical, conceptual, semantic, and syntactic
blow your stack. The meanings of these
dimensions (Gibbs, 1990, in press; Gibbs & non-idiomatic
phrases should have similar
Nayak, 1989; Glucksberg, in press). Scholentailments as do their cousin idiomatic expressions, because they are all motivated
ars often treat idioms simply as dead metaphors because they hold the belief that all by the same conceptual metaphors. Thus,
metaphors that are conventional in our or- the differences noted in the present experdinary language must be dead and really not iments between idioms and literal phrases
metaphors any longer (Gibbs, in press; La- are not really a matter of distinguishing beand literal
language.
koff & Turner, 1989). This position fails to tween idiomatic
Rather, the differences lie in exactly which
distinguish
between conventional
metaphors, which are part of our everyday con- conceptual knowledge motivates the existence and meanings of each linguistic exceptual system (e.g., MIND IS A CONpression.
Even though our conceptualizaTAINER,
ANGER IS HEATED
FLUID
tions
of
anger,
insanity, revelation, and so
IN A CONTAINER),
and historical metaon
are
highly
metaphorical,
the variety of
phors that have long since died out. The
different
conceptual
metaphors
we have for
conflation of dead and conventional metaeach
concept
makes
simple
literal
expresphors is partly due to the mistaken assumpsions
such
as
to
get
very
angry
or to
tion that things in our cognition that are
reveal
the
secret
less
exact
in
their
meanmost alive and most active are those that
ings
than
are
idioms
that
are
individually
are conscious. On the contrary, those that
motivated by single conceptual metaphors.
are most alive and most deeply entrenched,
Being able to actually predict something
efficient, and powerful are those that are so
about what idioms mean, based on an indeautomatic as to be unconscious and effortof the conceptual
less (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). There are pendent understanding

IDIOMATIC MEANING

metaphors that motivate idiomatic meaning, raises two questions. The first concerns whether people ordinarily activate or
instantiate some underlying metaphorical
source to target domain mapping each time
that they encounter an idiomatic expression
in discourse. It seems best right now to take
the conservative position that the present
results, along with those offered by Gibbs
and OBrien (1990) and Nayak and Gibbs
(MM), do not provide evidence in support
of the on-line activation of conceptual metaphors during idiom comprehension. What
is needed, and what might be quite difficult
to provide, are on-line studies that specititally examine whether metaphorical knowledge is automatically
instantiated
when
people read or hear idioms (Gibbs, 1992).
The lack of such evidence does not negate
the significance of the present studies demonstrating the metaphorical motivation for
idiomatic meaning.
A second question is whether people actually infer all of the complex meanings that
many idioms appear to possess each and
every time an idiom is understood. The result of the present findings, at the very
least, suggest that people often infer specific meanings for idioms that are more
complex than is implied when people read
simple literal paraphrases of these expressions. Determining
whether or not people
draw such inferences each time they read
or hear an idiom remains an open question.
It seems clear, though, that our sense of
what idioms mean partially depends on our
tacit understanding of the conceptual metaphors that link these phrases with their figurative meanings. It is precisely because idioms are evocative of different metaphorical information that these phrases play such
a significant role in our talk about everyday
experience.
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