Hitherto, theories of similarity have restricted themselves to judgments of what might be called literal similarity. A central thesis of this paper is that a complete account of similarity needs also to be sensitive to nonliteralness, or metaphoricity, an aspect of similarity statements that is most evident in similes, but that actually underlies…

A total of 411 elementary school children seven to twelve years old read short prose passages and selected the most appropriate continuation sentence from four alternatives. The completion sentences were constructed so that the correct (target) response involved either an explicit (simile) or an implicit (metaphor) metaphorical comparison. It was…

THESE THREE TESTS--"ROUGHING IT,""THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA," AND "THE SHORT STORY"--WERE DESIGNED BY THE OREGON CURRICULUM STUDY CENTER FOR A NINTH-GRADE LITERATURE CURRICULUM. THEY ARE INTENDED TO ACCOMPANY CURRICULUM UNITS AVAILABLE AS ED 010 811 AND ED 010 812. (MM)

Defining metaphor as "seeing a concept from one class in terms of a concept from another class," a study was devised that analyzed the degree to which two concepts occupy dissimilar positions with respect to their category or domain (within-domain distance), and the degree to which categories themselves are dissimilar (between-domain distance).…

CONVENTIONS FOR CLASSICAL JAPANESE HAIKU USUALLY INCLUDE--17 JAPANESE SYLLABLES IN A 5-7-5 LINE PATTERN, AND SOME SPECIFIC REFERENCE TO AN ASPECT OF NATURE AND TO A PARTICULAR EVENT, PRESENTED AS IF IT WERE HAPPENING IN THE IMMEDIATE PRESENT TO ALLOW THE READER TO EXPERIENCE THE POET'S EMOTION. HAIKU IN ENGLISH, A FORM OF POETRY WHICH HAS BECOME…

Three principles are integral to any reading theory which provides reading teachers and researchers with the linguistic explanatory power required by linguistic theory. A clear understanding of language is dependent on the knowledge of what language is and how it works. There is an important distinction between competence and performance; most…

Jargon grows and communication is retarded when a learned vocabulary becomes more important for its social than its communicative functions. Teachers often severely correct the culturally deprived speaker of nonstandard English, whereas their first concern should be what is communicated, not how it is communicated. We are, after all, teaching…

Two experiments are described in which reaction times for understanding target sentences or phrases in terms of a preceding context were measured. In experiment one, the target sentences followed either short or long contexts which induced either literal interpretations or metaphorical ones. Results indicated that only in the short context…

Designed to help the beginning or experienced poet, this book describes the progressive stages and possible difficulties in writing poetry--planning, the actual work with language and form, appraisal, and revision. "Journal Projects," or assignments, presenting increasingly difficult material are appended to each section of the book to encourage…

The purpose of this study was to determine the developmental patterns of figurative language in elementary school children of varied socioeconomic and achievement backgrounds. Children were randomly selected from grades three through six in five elementary schools of differing socioeconomic levels. Within each school one experimental class per…

A study of symbolism in feature films reveals how the symbolism employed by film makers can serve as a bridge between feeling and thought, and between aesthetics and cognition. What individuals read from and learn through a symbol varies with what they bring to it. The filmmaker's symbolims must be universal and not private. However, symbolism in…

Oral tradition, both rural and urban, forms an infrastructure for this anthology, which presents selections of black poetry with an emphasis on the poetry of the sixties. Based on the thesis that the new black poetry's main referents are black speech and black music, the anthology includes examples from the oral tradition of folk sermon,…

The capacity to appreciate and produce metaphoric language is thought to develop at adolescence. Yet metaphors are frequently noted in the speech of preschool children. To resolve this apparent contradiction, a test probing metaphoric capacity was devised. Matched groups of subjects ranging in age from 3 1/2 to 19 were required to indicate…

Various approaches to teaching creative writing to children are described. The book contains many examples of children's writing and stresses the need to listen to the child, to praise, to make suggestions gently, and to encourage the child to use his own senses for firsthand impressions and to say what he truly feels. Some of the chapters discuss…

The author reports on a study designed to determine the effects of figurative language--particularly the metaphor--on persuasive discourse, by comparing hypotheses developed from the theories of Michael Osborn, Jean Piaget, and Charles Osgood. In addition to a figurative language variable (metaphor versus literal), other variables in the study…