Swimming against the current: Do idioms reflect conceptual structure?

Recent work inspired by cognitive linguistics suggests that some idioms mak e sense (i.e., their meanings seem transparent) because they are motivated by conceptual structures that exist independently of language. We claim tha t idioms cannot, in principle, be used to argue for the existence of such c onceptual structures. To support this argument we demonstrate that people's intuitions about idiom transparency vary as a function of what they believ e to be the meaning of the idiom. Thus, when people learn an idiom's meanin g, they attempt to map elements of that meaning onto the linguistic constit uents of the idiom. This mapping makes the stipulated meaning seem transpar ent, while it obscures the possibility that the idiom conceivably could mea n something else. For example, people who learn that the statement 'The goo se hangs high' bodes well have a difficult time conceiving of a negative re ading, while those who learn that it expresses impending doom cannot easily conceive of a positive reading. In this way, our knowledge of the meaning of the idiom constrain the way we 'motivate' the idiom. Instead of reflecti ng conceptual structures, then, we suggest that intuitions about idiom tran sparency reflect the mind's interpretive strategies. (C) 1999 Elsevier Scie nce B.V. All rights reserved.