Table Of Contentinterpreting figurative meaning
InterpretingFigurativeMeaningcriticallyevaluatestherecentempiricalwork
frompsycholinguisticsandneuroscienceexaminingthesuccessesanddiffi-
cultiesassociatedwithinterpretingfigurativelanguage.Thereisnowahuge,
oftencontradictory,literatureonhowpeopleunderstandfiguresofspeech.
Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr., and Herbert L. Colston argue that there may not
be a single theory or model that adequately explains both the processes
andproductsoffigurativemeaningexperience.Experimentalresearchmay
ultimately be unable to simply adjudicate between current models in psy-
chology,linguistics,andphilosophyofhowfigurativemeaningisinterpreted.
Alternatively,theauthorsadvanceabroadtheoreticalframework,motivated
byideasfrom“dynamicalsystemstheory,”thatdescribesthemultipleinter-
acting influences that shape people’s experiences of figurative meaning in
discourse.Thisbookdetailspastresearchandtheory,offersacriticalassess-
mentofthiswork,andsetsthestageforanewvisionoffigurativeexperience
inhumanlife.
Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr., is Professor of Psychology at the University of
California, Santa Cruz. He is the author of several books including The
Poetics of Mind: Figurative Thought, Language, and Understanding; Inten-
tionsintheExperienceofMeaning,andEmbodimentandCognitiveScience.
HeisalsoeditorofthevolumeTheCambridgeHandbookofMetaphorand
ThoughtandeditorofthejournalMetaphorandSymbol.
HerbertL.ColstonisProfessorofPsychologyattheUniversityofWiscon-
sin, Parkside. He has published widely and edited several books including
FigurativeLanguageComprehension:SocialandCulturalInfluencesandIrony
inLanguageandThought:ACognitiveScienceReader.
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Interpreting Figurative Meaning
Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr.
UniversityofCalifornia,SantaCruz
Herbert L. Colston
UniversityofWisconsin,Parkside
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Gibbs,RaymondW.
Interpretingfigurativemeaning/RaymondW.Gibbs,Jr.,HerbertL.Colston.
p. cm.
Includesbibliographicalreferences.
isbn978-1-107-02435-9(hardback)–isbn978-1-107-60727-9
1.Figuresofspeech. 2.Sociolinguistics. 3.Psycholinguistics.
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contents
1 Introduction page1
2 IdentifyingFigurativeLanguage 15
3 ModelsofFigurativeLanguageComprehension 58
4 InterpretingSpecificFiguresofSpeech 128
5 IndeterminacyinFigurativeLanguageExperience 192
6 FactorsShapingFigurativeMeaningInterpretation 260
7 BroadeningtheScopeofFigurativeLanguageStudies 327
References 345
Index 381
v
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Cambridge Books Online
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Interpreting Figurative Meaning
Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr, Herbert L. Colston
Book DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139168779
Online ISBN: 9781139168779
Hardback ISBN: 9781107024359
Paperback ISBN: 9781107607279
Chapter
1 - Introduction pp. 1-14
Chapter DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139168779.001
Cambridge University Press
1
Introduction
Figurative language generally refers to speech where speakers mean
something other than what they literally say. Consider a situation
in which Harriet says to a friend, “My marriage is an icebox.” Most
people recognize that Harriet intends to communicate something
negativeabouthermarriage,suchasitisnotemotionallyaffection-
ateorsexuallypassionate.Howlistenersarriveatthesemetaphorical
meaningsisatopicofconsiderabledebatewithinboththehumanities
andcognitivescience.Onewidelyheldbeliefisthatmetaphoricallan-
guagemustbemoredifficulttounderstandthanplain,literalspeech,
preciselybecausemetaphors,likeallkindsoffigurativelanguage,are
ornamentalanddeviatefromliteralthought.Astandardwaytoassess
thisideaistomeasuretheamountoftimeittakeslisteners,orread-
ers,tocomprehendfigurative(inthiscasemetaphorical)utterances
comparedtoroughlyequivalentliteralspeech.
The results of dozens of studies present a complex picture on
thisissue.Although,whenseeninisolation,metaphoricalutterances
generallytakelongertounderstandthanliteralones,figurativespeech
canoftenbeunderstoodasquicklyasliteralspeechwhenencountered
in realistic discourse contexts (Gibbs, 1994, 2011 for reviews). This
conclusionisespeciallytrueformorefamiliar,conventionalfigurative
language, such as idioms (e.g., “kick the bucket”), stock metaphors
(e.g.,“Johnisatiger”),conventionalironies(e.g.,“Afinefriendyou
are”),andcertainindirectspeechacts(e.g.,“Canyoupassthesalt?”).
Somescholarsargue,nonetheless,thatnovelfigurativelanguage,such
1
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2 InterpretingFigurativeMeaning
ascreativemetaphors,willalwaysrequireadditionalcognitiveeffortto
understandcomparedtothatneededtoprocessnonfigurativespeech.
The extra time needed to comprehend figurative language is often
assumedtoreflectinitialprocessingofaword’s(oranentirephrase’s)
literalorsemanticmeaning,withcontexthavingaguidingrolelater
intheinterpretationprocess.
Ouraiminthisbookistocriticallyevaluatetherecentempirical
work that examines people’s successes and difficulties when inter-
pretingfigurativemeanings.Althoughmainstreampsycholinguistics
didnotinitiallypaymuchattentiontotheproblemofhowfigurative
speech was understood, because such language was seen as abnor-
mal, there is now a huge literature that has examined many aspects
ofhowpeoplelearn,produce,andcomprehendfigurativelanguage.
Not surprisingly, many theories have been proposed to account for
how people understand different types of figurative language. We
willdescribethesetheoriesandtheempiricalstudiestestingthemin
the chapters that follow. Our primary focus is on the debates over
the cognitive effort that is required to interpret speakers’ and writ-
ers’ meanings when they use figurative language, and the cognitive
effectsormeaningsthatarisefromlisteners’andreaders’interpretive
processes.
The time is ripe for this reappraisal of the research on figurative
meaning because of some misguided assumptions about both the
theoriesandempiricalmethodsadvocatedinthestudyoffigurative
language processing. For instance, scholars continue to assume that
there is a principled distinction between literal and nonliteral lan-
guage, and that a single theory can account for how all aspects of
figurativelanguageareunderstood.Werejectbothofthesebeliefs.
Atthesametime,researchers,especiallyincognitivescience,main-
tain simplistic ideals about the nature of figurative meanings, such
as the notion that speakers wish to convey single messages by their
use of figurative, as opposed to so-called literal, speech. Scholars
also assume that “understanding” figurative language rests on some
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Introduction 3
definitive “click of comprehension” that can be readily measured in
scientific experiments. These idealistic views of figurative meaning
have, in our view, brought forth a whole host of na¨ıve theories that
onlyaddressasmallrangeofdiscoursesituationsinwhichfigurative
utterancesareproducedandinterpreted.
Weapproachthetopicofinterpretingfigurativemeaningfromthe
perspectiveoftwocognitivepsychologistswhospecializeinresearch
exploring how, and why, people produce and understand language.
Over the past 25 years or so, psycholinguistics has been primarily
interested in describing the moment-by-moment mental processes
that occur when people produce and comprehend language, rang-
ingfromtheidentificationsofspeechsoundsandwrittenwords,up
to larger meaningful units of conversation and texts. As psycholo-
gists have long realized, it is impossible to introspect about these
rapid, mostly unconscious mental processes because humans have
evolved to be remarkably efficient in using language. Although lin-
guists, psychologists, and philosophers explore people’s intuitions
aboutaspectsoflanguage,suchasjudgmentsofgrammaticality,cog-
nitive scientists are unanimous in their belief that intuition alone
is insufficient to systematically study the operations of the language
processor.Forthisreason,psycholinguists(includingneurolinguists)
havedevelopedawiderangeofexperimentalmethodsthatallowthem
todrawinferencesabouttheautomatic,unconsciousprocessesoccur-
ringwhenpeopleordinarilyuselanguage.Thesemethodsare“indi-
rect”inthesensethattheyrequireparticipantstoengageindifferent
tasks,thedatafromwhichcanthenbeanalyzedtodrawconclusions
about possible hypotheses on how figurative language is ordinarily
understood.
But psycholinguists’ primary interest with early aspects of pro-
cessing leads them to posit general models of figurative language
interpretation that might be quite misleading. People may not pro-
cess all figurative meaning in the same way, precisely because the
kindsandformsofdifferenttropesaresufficientlyvariedastoresist
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