Chapter 21 - Figurative Language

Abstract

This chapter presents a new look at the continuing debates in psycholinguistics over what is special about figurative language use. Figurative language does not constitute a unified class of linguistic materials that are understood by special figurative processes. Nonetheless, the indeterminate nature of many aspects of figurative meaning, a fact that is not properly acknowledged in many psycholinguistic studies, raises important issues about the possible trade-off between minimizing cognitive effort and maximizing cognitive effects during figurative language processing. This trade-off can be empirically studied and form the basis for future psycholinguistic research on figurative language. One of the continuing difficulties with the psycholinguistics literature on figurative language understanding is that few scholars ever attempt to define the terms literal and figurative. A traditional assumption in many academic disciplines is that literal meaning is primary and the product of default language comprehension. Thus, in psycholinguistic terms, the human language processor is designed for the analysis of literal meanings. Nonliteral, indirect, and figurative meanings are secondary products, and dependent on some prior analysis of what words and expressions literally mean. This general theory implies that nonliteral meanings should always take more time to interpret than are literal meanings.