Conceptual representations in language processing employ
both linguistic distributional and embodied information. Here,
we aim to demonstrate the roles of these two components in
metaphor processing. The linguistic component is captured by
linguistic distributional frequency (LDF), that is, how often
the constituent words appear together in context. The
embodied component, on the other hand, refers to how easy it
is to generate an embodied simulation, operationalised by a
previous norming study. In the current study, we looked at the
interplay of these components in metaphor processing, and
investigated their roles at different depths of processing in
two experiments. Thus, we required participants to engage in
shallow processing (Experiment 1: Sensibility Judgement), or
deep processing (Experiment 2: Interpretation Generation).
Results showed that the increase of both variables made it
more likely to accept a metaphor. However, whereas ease of
simulation (EoS) contributed to the speed of processing at
both levels of depth, LDF only affected the speed in shallow
processing. Specifically, LDF acted as a heuristic, both to
speed up responses to accept metaphors as sensible when the
frequency is high, and to flag up potentially unsuccessful
processing when it is low. Overall, these results support views
of language processing that emphasise the importance of both
linguistic and embodied components according to task goals.