Creative Writing: Figurative Language

Abstract

In semantics, figurative language is usually defined quite specifically as the extension or augmentation of meaning for a word through the processes of metaphor (i.e. the meaning is transferred from one thing to another). Indeed, cognitive linguistics (and, further, deconstructionists such as De Man and Foucault) would argue that there is no genuine distinction between figurative language and literal or non-figurative language; figurative language is universal, both in terms of usage and in terms, even, of its providence. The mind is not at all literal in its methods meaning making, and figurative processes are fundamental to the ways in which we conceptualise experience. We will focus on metaphor as figurative language in the next chapter. The subject of this chapter is figurative meaning more generally. To refer to Katie Wales: [The term] figurative language sometimes embraces in literary criticism all kinds of devices or features which are semantically or grammatically marked or unusual in some way. (2011: 152)