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Figurative Language and Cognitive Science

A Special Issue of metaphor and Symbolic Activity

• Edited by Richard P. Honeck

• Price: $35.00
• Binding: Hardback
• Pages: 456
• Published by: Psychology Press (formerly published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates)
• Publication Date: 1st April 1996
• ISBN: 978-0-8058-9926-9

About the Book

The articles in this special issue focus on experimental psychological, neuropsychological, and computer-based approaches to figurative language, suggesting the enormous impact of cognitive science on our understanding of figurative language.

Where, exactly, does figurative language fit in the larger scheme of things? The basic thesis is that much of intelligent behavior partakes of indirectness -- layeredness, levels, embeddedness, and tangled hierarchies. Deficiencies in this respect, brought about by inabilities to build processing structures by using prior or old information, result in a lesser ability to process not only figurative language but all sorts of indirect cognition, including pretense, deception, etc. This special issue attempts to further the goal of "unisolating" figurative language and making it less special, whether by viewing it in the more general light of indirectness or some other rubric.

Table of Contents

Volume 11, Number 1, 1996.
Contents: R.P. Honeck, Introduction: Figurative Language and Cognitive Science: Past, Present, and Future. A.N. Katz, Experimental Psycholinguistics and Figurative Language: Circa 1995. L.E. Marks, On Perceptual Metaphors. C. Burgess, C. Chiarello, Neurocognitive Mechanisms Underlying Metaphor Comprehension and Other Figurative Language. J.H. Martin, Computational Approaches to Figurative Language.