ABSTRACT
Metaphor is a pervasive and important phenomenon, both in literature and in ordinary language. It is also an immensely variable phenomenon. If metaphors convey chunks of information rather than discrete units, they can paint a richer and more detailed picture of our subjective experience than might be expressed by literal language. During the knowledge acquisition phase which precedes construction of a natural language processing system, the analyst should attempt to acquire the concepts of the informant without judging the concepts to be acceptable or unacceptable. Metaphors were identified in the transcripts of interview sessions. Protocols were scored in terms of idea units because metaphors are generally better conceptualized as single ideas than as individual words. Metaphor production was then measured in terms of the proportion of all distinct idea units that were metaphorical in nature.
