This collection contains a selection of recent work on people’s production of figurative language (metaphoric, ironic, metonymic, hyperbolic, ...) and similarly of figurative expression in visual media and artefact design. The articles illuminate issues such as why and under what circumstances people produce figurative expression and how it is moulded by their aims. By focusing on production, the intention is to help stimulate more academic research on it and redress historically lower levels of published work on generation than on understanding of figurative expression. The contributions stretch across various academic disciplines—mainly psychology, cognitive linguistics and applied linguistics, but with a representation also of philosophy and artificial intelligence—and across different types of endeavour—theoretical investigation and model building, experimental studies, and applications focussed work (for instance, figurative expression in product design and online support groups). There is also a wide-ranging introductory chapter that touches on areas outside the scope of the contributed articles and discusses difficult issues such as a complex interplay of production and understanding.

This volume brings together twelve usage-based studies conducted by leading researchers in language and cognition that explore core issues of figurativeness from the Cognitive Linguistics perspective. The individual chapters reveal the central function of figurativeness in thought and its impact on language. Cognition relies on knowledge-structuring tools in the construction of meaning both mentally and linguistically. Collectively, the chapters delve into an array of topics that are crucial to future research in figurative meaning construction, especially on questions of identification and structure of figures, the figurative motivation of constructions, the impact of figurativeness on pragmatic and multimodal communication, and the correlation between figures and cognitive models.

During L2 vocabulary instruction, figurative language frustrates even highly proficient users who find it difficult to cope with non-literal expressions, such as metaphors, metonymies, and idioms. Given that figurative language is closely associated with enhanced L2 communicative competence, this volume brings together theory and teaching applications, shedding light on the comprehension and production of figurative language in a foreign language context.

Our ability to speak, write, understand speech and read is critical to our ability to function in today's society. As such, psycholinguistics, or the study of how humans learn and use language, is a central topic in cognitive science. This comprehensive handbook is a collection of chapters written not by practitioners in the field, who can summarize the work going on around them, but by trailblazers from a wide array of subfields, who have been shaping the field of psycholinguistics over the last decade. Some topics discussed include how children learn language, how average adults understand and produce language, how language is represented in the brain, how brain-damaged individuals perform in terms of their language abilities and computer-based models of language and meaning. This is required reading for advanced researchers, graduate students and upper-level undergraduates who are interested in the recent developments and the future of psycholinguistics.

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 share interests in figurative language - including language studies, communication, literary criticism, neuroscience, semiotics, rhetoric and anthropology.

Intersubjectivity and usage play central roles in figurative language and are pivotal notions for a cognitively realistic research on figures of thought, speech, and communication. This volume brings together thirteen studies that explore the relationship between figurativity, intersubjectivity and usage from the Cognitive Linguistics perspective. The studies explore the impact of figurativity on areas of lexicon and grammar, on real discourse, and across different semiotic systems. Some studies focus on the psychological processes of the comprehension of figurativity; other studies address the ways in which figures of thought and language are socially shared and the variation of figures through time and space. Moreover, some contributions are established on advanced corpus-based techniques and experimental methods. There are studies about metaphor, metonymy, irony and puns; about related processes, such as humor, empathy and ambiguation; and about the interaction between figures. Overall, this volume offers the advantages and the opportunities of an interactional and usage-based perspective of figurativity, embracing both the psychological and the intersubjective reality of figurative thought and language and empirically emphasizing the multidimensional character of figurativity, its central function in thought, and its impact on everyday communication.

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 Language Comprehension: Social and Cultural Influences is an edited scholarly book that ties together recent research concerning the social and cultural influences on figurative language cognition. These influences include gender, cultural differences, economic status, and inter-group effects, among others. The effects these influences have on people's use, comprehension, and even processing of figurative language, comprise the main theme of this volume. No other book offers such a look at the social and cultural influences on a whole family of figurative forms at several levels of cognition. This volume is of great interest to scholars and professionals in the disciplines of social and cognitive psychology, psycholinguistics, and second language acquisition, as well as cognitive and other fields of linguistics where scholars have interests in pragmatics, metaphor, symbol, discourse, and narrative. Some knowledge of the empirical and experimental methods used in language research, as well as some familiarity with theories underlying the use, comprehension, and processing of figurative language would be helpful to readers of this book.

A Cognitive Linguistic Study of The Use Of Creative Figurative Language in American Political Discourse

This book describes methods, risks, and challenges involved in the construction of metaphor and metonymy digital repositories. The first part of this volume showcases established and new projects around the world in which metaphors and metonymies are harvested and classified. The second part provides a series of cognitive linguistic studies focused on highlighting and discussing theoretical and methodological risks and challenges involved in building these digital resources. The volume is a result of an interdisciplinary collaboration between cognitive linguists, psychologists, and computational scientists supporting an overarching idea that metaphor and metonymy play a central role in human cognition, and that they are deeply entrenched in recurring patterns of bodily experience. Throughout the volume, a variety of methods are proposed to collect and analyze both conceptual metaphors and metonymies and their linguistic and visual expressions.

This volume contains original research and innovative analyses that deepen our understanding of figurative thought and language. The selected papers focus on the multi-faceted aspect of figuration, its function in thought, and its impact on areas of grammar and communication. Key topics explored include metaphor, metonymy and their relationship to each other, as well as the less studied figure of hyperbole and its relation to the fundamental figures of metaphor and metonymy. Collectively, the papers examine the pragmatic reasoning processes triggered by figurative thought, the lexicogrammatical motivations and/or constraints on figurative language, the impact of deeply entrenched figurative thought on the lexicon of natural languages, the cultural origins of figurative thought, and the psycholinguistic motivations for figuration. The comprehensive treatment of these issues is fundamental for future research on figurative thought and language, particularly on questions of universality vs. specificity of figuration, the impact of figuration on constructions, cross-linguistic comparisons of figurative language, and cognitive-pragmatic approaches to figurative meaning.