Abstract
Metaphors are proven to have stronger emotional impact than literal
expressions. Although this conclusion is shown to be promising in benefiting
various NLP applications, the reasons behind this phenomenon are not well
studied. This paper conducts the first study in exploring how metaphors convey
stronger emotion than their literal counterparts. We find that metaphors are
generally more specific than literal expressions. The more specific property of
metaphor can be one of the reasons for metaphors' superiority in emotion
expression. When we compare metaphors with literal expressions with the same
specificity level, the gap of emotion expressing ability between both reduces
significantly. In addition, we observe specificity is crucial in literal
language as well, as literal language can express stronger emotion by making it
more specific.