Metaphor detection with topic transition, emotion and cognition in context

Abstract

Metaphor is a common linguistic tool in communication, making its detection in discourse a crucial task for natural language understanding. One popular approach to this challenge is to capture semantic incohesion between a metaphor and the dominant topic of the surrounding text. While these methods are effective, they tend to overclassify target words as metaphorical when they deviate in meaning from its context. We present a new approach that (1) distinguishes literal and non-literal use of target words by examining sentence-level topic transitions and (2) captures the motivation of speakers to express emotions and abstract concepts metaphorically. Experiments on an online breast cancer discussion forum dataset demonstrate a significant improvement in metaphor detection over the state-of-theart. These experimental results also reveal a tendency toward metaphor usage in personal topics and certain emotional contexts.