Figurative language and figurative thought

Abstract

discuss some of the experimental evidence on how common ground provides the context for people's fluency with figurative speech / illustrate how our ability to conceptualize experience in figurative terms also motivates why people use and understand figurative speech so effortlessly / illustrate some of the emerging connections between figurative thought and everyday language does figurative language violate communicative norms / metaphor / idioms / metonymy / colloquial tautologies / indirect speech acts / irony/sarcasm / oxymora (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (chapter)