Figurative language and cognitive psychology

Abstract

The past decade has witnessed the development of a significant body of research and theory concerning the areas of figurative language use and comprehension. The purpose of the present paper is to examine the broader implications of this research for contemporary cognitive psychology. The results of this examination reveal that cognitive psychology has dealt with figurative language as less important than literal language largely because of an implicit bias towards rationalistic philosophy and because of an unwillingness to deal with issues of ambiguity, novelty, beauty, and context; precisely those issues made salient by current research on figurative language.