Butterflies And Bananas. An experimental study into the effects of (a)symmetry, order, and context on the interpretation of visually and verbally presented juxtaposed entities

Keywords
Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Authors
Issue Date
2018-01-25
Language
en
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
Juxtaposed entities, like butterfly and dress or banana and bread, invite people to look for meaningful connections between the entities. The type of interpretation one ends up with might depend on which of the object is most likely to be the topic (symmetry), the alignment of the objects (order), and the presence of verbal cues (advertising context). The present study investigated whether (a)symmetry, order, and context affect the interpretation of visually and verbally presented juxtaposed entities. No effects were found for order and modality, but the results showed some interesting findings for symmetry and context. All object pairs (e.g., banana-bread) were most likely to elicit interpretations of comparison, but asymmetrical object pairs (e.g., butterfly- dress) increased the chance of metaphorical interpretations. Adding contextual cues like a brand name and a product category increased the chance of metaphorical interpretations even more.
Description
Citation
Faculty
Faculteit der Letteren