Figurative Language Comprehension

Using Figurative Language presents results from a multidisciplinary decades-long study of figurative language that addresses the question, 'Why don't people just say what they mean?' This research empirically investigates goals speakers or writers have when speaking (writing) figuratively, and concomitantly, meaning effects wrought by figurative language usage. These 'pragmatic effects' arise from many kinds of figurative language including metaphors (e.g. 'This computer is a dinosaur'), verbal irony (e.g. 'Nice place you got here'), idioms (e.g. 'Bite the bullet'), proverbs (e.g. 'Don't put all your eggs in one basket') and others. Reviewed studies explore mechanisms - linguistic, psychological, social and others - underlying pragmatic effects, some traced to basic processes embedded in human sensory, perceptual, embodied, cognitive, social and schematic functioning. The book should interest readers, researchers and scholars in fields beyond psychology, linguistics and philosophy that

Using Figurative Language presents results from a multidisciplinary decades-long study of figurative language that addresses the question, 'Why don't people just say what they mean?' This research empirically investigates goals speakers or writers have when speaking (writing) figuratively, and concomitantly, meaning effects wrought by figurative language usage. These 'pragmatic effects' arise from many kinds of figurative language including metaphors (e.g. 'This computer is a dinosaur'), verbal irony (e.g. 'Nice place you got here'), idioms (e.g. 'Bite the bullet'), proverbs (e.g. 'Don't put all your eggs in one basket') and others. Reviewed studies explore mechanisms - linguistic, psychological, social and others - underlying pragmatic effects, some traced to basic processes embedded in human sensory, perceptual, embodied, cognitive, social and schematic functioning. The book should interest readers, researchers and scholars in fields beyond psychology, linguistics and philosophy that

Bilingual Figurative Language Processing is a timely book that provides a much-needed bilingual perspective to the broad field of figurative language. This is the first book of its kind to address how bilinguals acquire, store, and process figurative language, such as idiomatic expressions (such as kick the bucket), metaphors (such as lawyers are sharks), and irony, and how these tropes might interact in real time across the bilingual's two languages. This volume offers the reader and the bilingual student an overview of the major strands of research, both theoretical and empirical, currently being undertaken in this field of inquiry. At the same time, Bilingual Figurative Language Processing provides readers and undergraduate and graduate students with the opportunity to acquire hands-on experience in the development of psycholinguistic experiments in bilingual figurative language. Each chapter includes a section on suggested student research projects. Selected chapters provide detail

Bilingual Figurative Language Processing is a timely book that provides a much-needed bilingual perspective to the broad field of figurative language. This is the first book of its kind to address how bilinguals acquire, store, and process figurative language, such as idiomatic expressions (such as kick the bucket), metaphors (such as lawyers are sharks), and irony, and how these tropes might interact in real time across the bilingual's two languages. This volume offers the reader and the bilingual student an overview of the major strands of research, both theoretical and empirical, currently being undertaken in this field of inquiry. At the same time, Bilingual Figurative Language Processing provides readers and undergraduate and graduate students with the opportunity to acquire hands-on experience in the development of psycholinguistic experiments in bilingual figurative language. Each chapter includes a section on suggested student research projects. Selected chapters provide detail

This lively introduction to figurative language explains a broad range of concepts, including metaphor, metonymy, simile, and blending, and develops new tools for analyzing them. It coherently grounds the linguistic understanding of these concepts in basic cognitive mechanisms such as categorization, frames, mental spaces, and viewpoint; and it fits them into a consistent framework which is applied to cross-linguistic data and also to figurative structures in gesture and the visual arts. Comprehensive and practical, the book includes analyses of figurative uses of both word meanings and linguistic constructions. • Provides definitions of major concepts • Offers in-depth analyses of examples, exploring multiple levels of complexity • Surveys figurative structures in different discourse genres • Helps students to connect figurative usage with the conceptual underpinnings of language • Goes beyond English to explore cross-linguistic and cross-modal data

Figurative language, such as verbal irony, metaphor, hyperbole, idioms, and other forms is an increasingly important subfield within the empirical study of language comprehension and use. Figurative L

With contributions from Aristotle to Lakoff and Johnson, and incorporating the work of philosophers, linguists, literary theorists, and cognitive psychologists, this wide-ranging and multidisciplinary

Repeated practice builds mastery, and this book provides exactly the practice students need to master the reading skills of using context clues and understanding figurative language. The 35 reproduci

Your students’ comprehension—and writing—abilities will soar with this big collection of no-prep, task cards that teach all about figurative language! Each reproducible card contains a high-interest m

Metaphor Networks focuses on the historical evolution of metaphor and proposes new theories on language change based on substantial empirical data. It explores how the metaphors of today are very ofte

The aim of this study is to discover basic principles underlying linguistic figurativeness and to develop a theory that is capable of capturing conventional figurative language (referred to as CFLT, i

Analytic philosophy was born from philosophic reflection on logic and mathematics. It has been at its strongest in these and related domains of reflection, domains that are friendly to definition and

Analytic philosophy was born from philosophic reflection on logic and mathematics. It has been at its strongest in these and related domains of reflection, domains that are friendly to definition and

Examining a key issue in second language acquisition (SLA) research, this book explores the relation between second language (L2) production and comprehension at the level of processing. The central q

Cross-referencing neurobiological knowledge with the invariance hypothesis, relevance theory, and frame semantics, Metaphor from the Ground Up: Understanding Figurative Language in Context unifies met

Falk-Ross and the contributing authors offer their different perspectives on supporting English language learners (ELLs) through specific strategies for assessment and instruction. Each chapter presen

Falk-Ross and the contributing authors offer their different perspectives on supporting English language learners (ELLs) through specific strategies for assessment and instruction. Each chapter presen

Emphasizing the unique and sometimes competing demands of listener and speaker, this book draws on linguistic theory, psycholinguistic studies and computational modeling to examine resulting asymmetri

While the role of metaphor in economics and business is substantiated in multiple research articles no comprehensive book-length study has appeared. The book gives a comprehensive overview of the fiel

Gale considers the imagery in all of the 135 novels and short stories of Henry James and presents what may well be the first extensive treatment of figurative language in the complete works of any nov

Interpreting Figurative Meaning critically evaluates the recent empirical work from psycholinguistics and neuroscience examining the successes and difficulties associated with interpreting figurative language. There is now a huge, often contradictory literature on how people understand figures of speech. Gibbs and Colston argue that there may not be a single theory or model that adequately explains both the processes and products of figurative meaning experience. Experimental research may ultimately be unable to simply adjudicate between current models in psychology, linguistics and philosophy of how figurative meaning is interpreted. Alternatively, the authors advance a broad theoretical framework, motivated by ideas from 'dynamical systems theory', that describes the multiple, interacting influences which shape people's experiences of figurative meaning in discourse. This book details past research and theory, offers a critical assessment of this work and sets the stage for a new vis