Project C04: Metaphors as an explanation tool
Metaphors make abstract concepts easier to explain because they draw on familiar structures and experiences. In the first funding phase, the project investigated how metaphors facilitate the understanding of new concepts: Which characteristics are emphasized or concealed, how can agency be expressed, and how are metaphors used specifically in explanations? Building on this, the project is now investigating how metaphorical explanations influence understanding and how they can be generated automatically and adapted to the reactions of the listener. This involves combining psychological approaches with methods from computational linguistics and natural language processing.
Research areas: Psychology, Computer science
Support Staff
Annika Korth, Paderborn University
Celina Moormann, Paderborn University
Hannah Osthövener, Paderborn University
Luis Melzer, Leibniz University Hannover
Svenja Boddem, Leibniz University Hannover
Former Members
Annedore Wilmes, Research associate
Julia Rabe, Research associate
Publications
Framing what and how to think: Lay people’s metaphors for algorithms
P.F. Porwol, M. Körber, F. Kern, C. Schulte, I. Scharlau, in: P. Cimiano, B. Paaßen, A.-L. Vollmer (Eds.), Proceedings of the 3rd TRR 318 Conference: Contextualizing Explanations, Bielefeld University Press, 2026.
Agency in metaphors of explaining: An analysis of scientific texts
I. Scharlau, K.J. Rohlfing, (2025).
An annotated corpus of elicited metaphors of explaining and understanding using MIPVU
P. Porwol, I. Scharlau, An Annotated Corpus of Elicited Metaphors of Explaining and Understanding Using MIPVU, OSF, 2025.
Investigating Co-Constructive Behavior of Large Language Models in Explanation Dialogues
L. Fichtel, M. Spliethöver, E. Hüllermeier, P. Jimenez, N. Klowait, S. Kopp, A.-C. Ngonga Ngomo, A. Robrecht, I. Scharlau, L. Terfloth, A.-L. Vollmer, H. Wachsmuth, ArXiv:2504.18483 (2025).
Investigating the Impact of Conceptual Metaphors on LLM-based NLI through Shapley Interactions
M. Sengupta, M. Muschalik, F. Fumagalli, B. Hammer, E. Hüllermeier, D. Ghosh, H. Wachsmuth, in: Accepted in Findings , EMNLP , 2025.
Investigating Co-Constructive Behavior of Large Language Models in Explanation Dialogues
L. Fichtel, M. Spliethöver, E. Hüllermeier, P. Jimenez, N. Klowait, S. Kopp, A.-C. Ngonga Ngomo, A. Robrecht, I. Scharlau, L. Terfloth, A.-L. Vollmer, H. Wachsmuth, in: Proceedings of the 26th Annual Meeting of the Special Interest Group on Discourse and Dialogue, Association for Computational Linguistics, Avignon, France, n.d.
Metaphors in 24 WIRED Level 5 Videos (Data corpus)
I. Scharlau, K. Miriam, Metaphors in 24 WIRED Level 5 Videos (Data Corpus), OSF, 2025.
Is explaining more like showing or more like building? Agency in metaphors of explaining
P.F. Porwol, I. Scharlau, Frontiers in Psychology (2025).
What do metaphors of understanding hide?
P.F. Porwol, I. Scharlau, STUDIA NEOFILOLOGICZ: NEROZPRAWY JĘZYKOZNAWCZE (Modern Language Studies: Linguistic Essays) XXI (2025) 181–198.
Analyzing the Use of Metaphors in News Editorials for Political Framing
M. Sengupta, R. El Baff, M. Alshomary, H. Wachsmuth, in: K. Duh, H. Gomez, S. Bethard (Eds.), Proceedings of the 2024 Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies (Volume 1: Long Papers), Association for Computational Linguistics, Mexico City, Mexico, 2024, pp. 3621–3631.
When to use a metaphor: Metaphors in dialogical explanations with addressees of different expertise
I. Scharlau, M. Körber, M. Sengupta, H. Wachsmuth, Frontiers in Language Sciences 3 (2024) 1474924.
Modeling Highlighting of Metaphors in Multitask Contrastive Learning Paradigms
M. Sengupta, M. Alshomary, I. Scharlau, H. Wachsmuth, in: H. Bouamor, J. Pino, K. Bali (Eds.), Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2023, Association for Computational Linguistics, Singapore, 2023, pp. 4636–4659.
Back to the Roots: Predicting the Source Domain of Metaphors using Contrastive Learning
M. Sengupta, M. Alshomary, H. Wachsmuth, in: Proceedings of the 2022 Workshop on Figurative Language Processing, 2022.
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