Paper Topic:

Propose a quantitative experiment that investigates an unexplored research question in the area of Metaphor

Language is politics , politics assigns power , power governs how people talk and how they are understood . The analysis of language from this point of view is more than an academic exercise : today , more than ever it is a survival skill (Lakoff 1990

Introduction

This describes an empirical experiment to access the differences in the emotional content delivered by similes compared to metaphors . A literature review will be presented to investigate the theories that studied the emotional intensity of both similes and metaphors

People inject a sense of poetry in their text

by using metaphors and similes . They do so in an attempt to unlock their imaginative powers in response to an urgent need to express their feelings (Killick 1999 Metaphors and similes provide us with unfamiliar ways of conceptualizing familiar things , and familiar ways of conceptualizing unfamiliar things (Lakoff Johnson , 1980 . Lakoff (1987 ) defined a metaphor as the expression of an understanding of one concept in terms of another concept , where there is some similarity or correlation between the two ' Metaphor is also defined in by Fairburn (1996 ) as a figure of speech in which one object is likened to anther by speaking of it as if it were that other ' Froggatt (1998 ) stated that metaphors are the most fundamental form of figurative language as they transfer the meaning form one situation to another . Metaphors within a given society reveal the fundamental values and assumptions of this culture

Metaphors consist of a , a vehicle , and a ground . The is the source or subject of the metaphor . The vehicle is the target domain . The ground is the relationship between the source and target . The and vehicle interact to create the ground (Verspoor 1993 . The first man to discuss metaphor was Aristotle . He stated that a metaphor is based on objective similarities between its objects (Verspoor 1993

On the other hand similes are defined as a figure of speech consisting of a comparison using like or as to make the connection between the two things that are being compared . RHL School (1999 ) defines Similes as comparisons that show how two things that are not alike in most ways are similar in one important way ' Authors usually use similes to make their writing more interesting

Roberts Kreuz (1994 ) empirical findings indicated that there is a big degree of overlap between metaphors and similes . These findings are not surprising since the only difference between both forms of speech is the use of like or as

Cognitive psychology models define emotions as goal-relevant activations of thought material that exceed the translating capacity of attention within a short time horizon (Wilce 2004 . Lubart Getz (1997 ) view emotions as constructions generated by psychological social , and biological factors . Some emotions are due to a combination of social and biological factors while others are due to single factors Some emotions such as fear are generated primarily by biological factors but may evolve to be generated as other physiological response such as escaping from a scary...

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