The role of mental images in metaphor comprehension is one of the controversial issues of
metaphor theory. To find out what are the mental representations of the components of
metaphor (topic and vehicle), we compared the comprehension of verbal metaphors and their
"literal" pictorial analogs ("dive into a book", "reading is a road", "reading is a flight").
Subjects of one group received three verbal metaphors, subjects of another group - three
pictorial metaphors (23 people in each group, students, 18-21 years old). The task was to
answer the question: "What is the meaning of this picture / this metaphor?"
When working with the pictorial metaphor to "Jump into the book", the subjects actualized
the associative field related to diving and swimming: the importance of training for the
reader-diver (30.4 % for pictorial metaphor vs 0% for verbal metaphor), the danger for not
gaining the end of the book (13% vs 0%). For the pictorial metaphor "Reading is a road", the
tortuosity of the road was mentioned as the difficulty of reading (21.7% vs 0%). With the
pictorial metaphor "Reading is flight", it was noted that reading helps to see something new
(43.1% vs 0%), rise above the world of fuss (39% vs 0%), get new opportunities (56.5 % vs
0%), for verbal - flight of fantasy (52.1% vs 21.7%).
Conclusion: when working with verbal metaphors, subjects do not actualize the detailed and
fully extended images, associated with vehicle (the process of jumping, swimming, flying or
traveling). Their understanding is guided by own experience of reading and linguistic
connotations, associated with the topic of metaphor.