Interpreting Figurative Meaning critically evaluates the recent empirical work from psycholinguistics and neuroscience examining the successes and difficulties associated with interpreting figurative language. There is now a huge, often contradictory literature on how people understand figures of speech. Gibbs and Colston argue that there may not be a single theory or model that adequately explains both the processes and products of figurative meaning experience. Experimental research may ultimately be unable to simply adjudicate between current models in psychology, linguistics and philosophy (...) of how figurative meaning is interpreted. Alternatively, the authors advance a broad theoretical framework, motivated by ideas from 'dynamical systems theory', that describes the multiple, interacting influences which shape people's experiences of figurative meaning in discourse. This book details past research and theory, offers a critical assessment of this work and sets the stage for a new vision of figurative experience in human life. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:276 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY The Elements of Moral Science. By Francis Wayland. Edited by Joseph L. B1au. (Cambridge : Harvard University Press, 1963. Pp. 1 + 413. $7.50.) We are indebted to Professor Blau of Columbia University and to the series of John tIarvard Books of the Harvard University Press for this attractive edition of a genuine American antique. Of this college text 100,000 copies were sold. Editions were (...) published in 1835, 1837, and 1865; also an abridged edition for secondary schools and translations into several languages. The present edition reproduces the 1837 text and gives the variations of 1835 and 1865 in the form of appendices. Especially noteworthy are Appendix (H), in which the author's denunciation of slavery is expanded in 1865 into a vigorous abolition appeal, and Appendix (N) against the supposed right of rebellion against "civil society." The Editor's fine, fifty-page Introduction gives us both a sketch of Wayland's distinguished career and an account of the writing, revising, and use of this book. The textbook is a product of Wayland's teaching of Ethics during his Presidency of Brown University. It was quickly adopted by many colleges and remained for two generations a favorite exposition of "Christian ethics" both for colleges throughout the United States and for the mission fields abroad. Among Baptists it was especially popular, but it was not sectarian either by intention or by influence. Wayland began his instruction in moral science by using as a text William Paley's Principles o[ Moral and Political Philosophy (1785). Finding himself in disagreement with Paley on many points, he introduced his own lectures increasingly until finally Paley was completely displaced by Wayland's own lectures and textbook. Both Paley and Wayland agreed in teaching that "the will of God" is the ultimate and absolute ground of moral obligation, but both also agreed with Dr. Johnson, when he said that "religion will appear to be the voice of reason and morality the will of God." There could be no conflict between the principles of eternal happiness and the obligation to obey a benevolent God. What turned Wayland against Paley's text was the preference shown to "natural theology" over "the moral sense" or conscience, and in Bishop Joseph Butler's Sermons he found a justification for the reliability of conscience as an innate, instinctive faculty of correct moral judgment. This confession on Wayland's part seems to indicate that he repudiated "theological utilitarianism," as Paley's system was called, along with Paley's Natural Theology and Evidences of Christianity, and embraced the Scottish "moral sense" philosophy. However, anyone who reads both Paley's and Wayland's texts will be struck by the ways in which Wayland's "moral science" shows the influence of Paley's philosophy and Principles. In the interest of the history of philosophy it may be appropriate to devote the remainder of the review to pointing out how Wayland followed Paley more than Butler. What seems to have annoyed Wayland in Paley's text was not so much the theoretical philosophy and theology as the practical application of obligations to British society. Wayland was a conservative Jeffersonian Republican in his political ideas, whereas Paley was a latitudinarian Anglican, critical of the society in which he lived. One illustration of this difference is striking: Paley begins his treatment of Practical Ethics (which is by far the larger part in each text) as follows: If you should see a flock of pigeons in a field of corn; and if (instead of each picking where and what it liked, taking just as much as it wanted, and no more) you should see ninety-nineof them gathering all they got into a heap; reserving nothing for themselves but the chaff and the refuse; keeping this heap for one, and that the weakest perhaps, the worst pigeon of the flock; sitting around and looking on all the winter, whilst this one was devouring, throwing about, and wasting it; and if a pigeon, more hardy or hungry than the rest, touched the grain of the hoard, all the others instantly flying about it, and tearing it to pieces: If you should see this, you would see... (shrink)

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 figuratively, and concomitantly, meaning effects wrought by figurative language usage. These 'pragmatic effects' arise from many kinds of figurative language including metaphors, verbal irony, idioms, proverbs 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. (shrink)

The conditions for verbal irony comprehension implicitly or directly claimed as necessary by all of the recent philosophic, linguistic and psycholinguistic theories of verbal irony (Clark and Gerrig 1984; Kreuz and Glucksberg 1989; Kumon-Nakamura, Glucksberg and Brown 1995; Sperber and Wilson 1981, 1986) were experimentally tested. Allusion to a violation of expectations, predictions, desires, preferences, social norms, etc., was confirmed as a necessary condition, but pragmatic insincerity was not. Pragmatically sincere comments can be comprehended ironically. A revised set of conditions (...) was proposed, involving intentional violation of Gricean conversational maxims and the portrayal of a contrast between expectations and reality. A cautionary note was made, however, regarding the viability of a single account of verbal irony comprehension. (shrink)

Preface -- Acknowledgments -- A note on examples -- 1. The coin toss -- 2. Deviance -- 3. Omission -- 4. Imprecision -- 5. Indirectness -- 6. Figurativeness -- 7. Language play -- 8. THE social media -- 9. The art of language -- 10. The end game -- Epilogue: A clearing revealing an eclipse -- References -- Index.

I am pleased to receive the reigns of Metaphor and Symbol from Ray Gibbs, who has served as Editor for no less than 19 years. Ray has guided the journal successfully over this time, an era of great...

The conditions for verbal irony comprehension implicitly or directly claimed as necessary by all of the recent philosophic, linguistic and psycholinguistic theories of verbal irony were experimentally tested. Allusion to a violation of expectations, predictions, desires, preferences, social norms, etc., was confirmed as a necessary condition, but pragmatic insincerity was not. Pragmatically sincere comments can be comprehended ironically. A revised set of conditions was proposed, involving intentional violation of Gricean conversational maxims and the portrayal of a contrast between expectations and (...) reality. A cautionary note was made, however, regarding the viability of a single account of verbal irony comprehension. (shrink)

There is an irony in that, the modern empirical and scientific study of metaphor, as arguably the major form of figurativity, arose in part from a realization that metaphor resides in territories s...