Factors contributing to the aesthetic attractiveness of metaphors in a complimentary context

Abstract Metaphor is widely used in our daily lives to express strong emotions, comprehend abstract concepts and display aesthetic qualities. Women prefer metaphorical language when men pay them compliments in romantic situations; however, in this context, it remains unclear which factors are likely to contribute to the aesthetic attractiveness of metaphor. In the current study, 90 female undergraduates were recruited to rate 477 compliments in terms of language variables (i.e., appropriateness, figurativeness, familiarity, and imageability) and emotional perception (i.e., attractiveness, valence, romance, and arousal) on a 7-point Likert scale. The compliments were generated by 74 men who were required to use language to impress women in a previous independent experiment. A hierarchical regression model was built to explore the potential factors of the aesthetic attractiveness of metaphors. The results showed that a metaphor's attractiveness was positively correlated with figurativeness, imageability, romance and arousal but negatively associated with familiarity, which suggests that metaphors are more attractive when they incorporate high figurativeness, imageability, romance and arousal and low familiarity. Overall, this study indicates that a metaphor's aesthetic attractiveness may be determined by the social context, a communicator's motivation and specific linguistic aspects.

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