Abstract: Metaphor has always been seen as a literary figure of speech. Conceptual metaphor theory (CMT) put forward by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) however sees it differently. CMT suggests that metaphor is a way through which we communicate and understand abstract concepts by transferring the meaning and structure of source domain to target domain. Some researchers indicated that concrete concepts are activated automatically when people process abstract concepts. In contrast, some other studies showed that the activation of metaphoric associations do not occur automatically. It has limits and depends on task context. The present study investigated the limits of activation automaticity and found the boundary conditions of this activation from two aspects: target concept-power and source concept-vertical space. On the basis of Schubert (2005)’s experiment 2, the first experiment included unrelated group label pairs that differ in power while have no direct power relations, such as “princess-clerk”. So, we could contrast the metaphysical congruency effect of these pairs with related pairs. This was meant to find out the activation of metaphorical representation whether is constrained to direct power relation or extends to a more general hierarchical relation. The results showed that metaphorical representation was activated in both Schubert (2005) condition and unrelated group labels condition. Experiment 2 used relatedness judgement task to further investigate the modulation of metaphorical congruency effect of power words. Participants did not need to compare the power of two group labels in this task. Space-power congruency was found with related group label pairs, but disappeared with unrelated group pairs. In sum, experiment 1 and 2 explored the boundary condition of metaphorical representation from a perspective of power relation. Combining the results of two experiments, it was clear that neither experimental task nor the relationship between word pairs alone could decide the activation of metaphorical representation. Namely, they were not the critical conditions for the activation of metaphorical representation. Unrelated group pairs under relatedness judgement task was the only condition that didn’t show metaphysical congruency effect. The difference between this condition and others was that participants didn’t construct power relation between group pairs under this condition. Therefore, understand the power relation between two words is necessary for the activation of metaphorical representation. Experiment 3 was similar to experiment 1, with the exception that word pairs were presented diagonally on the screen instead of vertical up and down. Thus, horizontal difference would be an interference information for metaphorical representation to retrieve vertical clues. Besides, we asked participants to respond to the horizontal position of the target words so their attention was caught horizontally. Results of Experiment 3 also showed metaphorical congruency effect indicating that the activation of metaphorical representation is independent of special clues from perceptual information. Still, it’s worth noting that conceptual metaphor theory is not the only explanation for the congruency effect in current study. A prominent alternative is polarity correspondence principle put forward by Proctor and Cho (2006). This explanation would expect a congruency effect between power and horizontal space in experiment 3. But no such congruency had been found.

Key words: conceptual metaphor theory, perceptual representation, power, vertical space, automaticity

摘要： 本研究通过3个实验考察权力概念垂直空间隐喻表征激活的条件。实验1发现，在权力判断任务中，具有直接权力关系的相关词对和间接权力关系的无关词对都可以激活隐喻表征。实验2使用相关判断任务，只有相关词对激活了隐喻表征。这说明对词汇进行语义加工并理解权力关系是激活隐喻表征的重要条件。实验3引入水平方向干扰，并将被试的注意转移到干扰信息上，结果仍然出现了隐喻一致性效应，表明垂直空间线索不是隐喻表征激活的必要条件。

关键词: 概念隐喻, 知觉表征, 权力概念, 垂直空间, 自动性