Herbert L. Colston

Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr

Interpreting Figurative Meaning explores interdisciplinary debates on the ways in which humans comprehend figurative language in everyday life.

Interpreting Figurative Meaning

Gathers decades of research on figurative language cognition to answer the question, 'Why don't people just say what they mean?'

Using Figurative Language

Explains the complexities of how language supports human social interaction using the framework of embodied cognition.

Embodiment and Conjoined Antonymy

How Language Makes Meaning

Albert N. Katz

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.

Herbert L. Colston

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