I propose that an account of metaphor understanding which covers the full range of cases has to allow for two routes or modes of processing. One is a process of rapid, local, on-line concept construction that applies quite generally to the recovery of word meaning in utterance comprehension. The other requires a greater focus on the literal meaning of sentences or texts, which is metarepresented as a whole and subjected to more global, reflective pragmatic inference. The questions whether metaphors convey (...) a propositional content and what role imagistic representation plays receive somewhat different answers depending on the processing route. (shrink)

Dan Sperber, Deirdre Wilson; IX*—Loose Talk, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 86, Issue 1, 1 June 1986, Pages 153–172, https://doi.org/10.1093/ar.

The interplay of content and context is observable in a moment to moment manner as propositional content unfolds. The current contribution illustrates this through data from real-time language comprehension indicating that propositional content is not computed in isolation but relies in important ways on context during every step of the computation of meaning. The relevant notion of context that we have to adopt includes all aspects of possible worlds and draws on a variety of knowledge representations, which in a first (...) processing phase serve to generate expectations for upcoming words. In a second phase, the discourse representation is assessed and if necessary updated by means of inferential reasoning and enrichment to reflect the speaker’s intended meaning. (shrink)

Metaphor has a double life. It can be described as a directional process in which a stable, familiar base domain provides inferential structure to a less clearly specified target. But metaphor is also described as a process of finding commonalities, an inherently symmetric process. In this second view, both concepts may be altered by the metaphorical comparison. Whereas most theories of metaphor capture one of these aspects, we offer a model based on structure-mapping that captures both sides of metaphor processing. (...) This predicts (a) an initial processing stage of symmetric alignment; and (b) a later directional phase in which inferences are projected to the target. To test these claims, we collected comprehensibility judgments for forward (e.g., “A rumor is a virus”) and reversed (“A virus is a rumor”) metaphors at early and late stages of processing, using a deadline procedure. We found an advantage for the forward direction late in processing, but no directional preference early in processing. Implications for metaphor theory are discussed. (shrink)

This revised edition includes a new Preface outlining developments in Relevance Theory since 1986, discussing the more serious criticisms of the theory, and ...

Until recently, cognitive science focused on such mental functions as problem solving, grammar, and pattern-the functions in which the human mind most closely resembles a computer. But humans are more than computers: we invent new meanings, imagine wildly, and even have ideas that have never existed before. Today the cutting edge of cognitive science addresses precisely these mysterious, creative aspects of the mind.The Way We Think is a landmark analysis of the imaginative nature of the mind. Conceptual blending is already (...) widely known in research laboratories throughout the world; this book, written to be accessible to both lay readers and interested scientists, is its definitive statement. Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner show that conceptual blending is the root of the cognitively modern human mind, and that conceptual blends themselves are continually combined and reblended to create the rich mental fabric in which we live.The Way We Think shows how this blending operates; how it is affected by (and gives rise to) language, identity, culture, and invention; and how we imagine what could be and what might have been. The result is a bold and exciting new view of how the mind works. (shrink)

Author Max Black argues that language should conform to the discovered regularities of experience it is radically mistaken to assume that the conception of language is a mirror of reality.

Various accounts of metaphor interpretation propose that it involves constructing an ad hoc concept on the basis of the concept encoded by the metaphor vehicle. This paper discusses some of the differences between these theories and investigates their main empirical prediction: that metaphor interpretation involves enhancing properties of the metaphor vehicle that are relevant for interpretation, while suppressing those that are irrelevant. This hypothesis was tested in a cross-modal lexical priming study adapted from early studies on lexical ambiguity. The different (...) patterns of suppression of irrelevant meanings observed in disambiguation studies and in the experiment on metaphor reported here are discussed in terms of differences between meaning selection and meaning construction. (shrink)

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 this paper I argue against a widely accepted model of utterance interpretation, namely the LS model, according to which the literal interpretation of an utterance (the proposition literally expressed by that utterance) must be computed before non-literal interpretations can be entertained. Alleged arguments in favor of this model are shown to be fallacious, counterexamples are provided, and alternative models are sketched.

This is a book about the meanings of words and how they can combine to form larger meaningful units, as well as how they can fail to combine when the ...

On the relevance-theoretic approach outlined in this paper, linguistic metaphors are not a natural kind, and ―metaphor‖ is not a theoretically important notion in the study of verbal communication. Metaphorical interpretations are arrived at in exactly the same way as literal, loose and hyperbolic interpretations: there is no mechanism specific to metaphors, and no interesting generalisation that applies only to them. In this paper, we defend this approach in detail by showing how the same inferential procedure applies to utterances at (...) both ends of the literal-loose-metaphorical continuum, and how both literal and metaphorical utterances may create poetic effects. (shrink)

The Generative Lexicon presents a novel and exciting theory of lexical semantics that addresses the problem of the "multiplicity of word meaning" - that is, how ...

Measuring event-related potentials (ERPs) has been fundamental to our understanding of how language is encoded in the brain. One particular ERP response, the N400 response, has been especially influential as an index of lexical and semantic processing. However, there remains a lack of consensus on the interpretation of this component. Resolving this issue has important consequences for neural models of language comprehension. Here we show that evidence bearing on where the N400 response is generated provides key insights into what it (...) reflects. A neuroanatomical model of semantic processing is used as a guide to interpret the pattern of activated regions in functional MRI, magnetoencephalography and intracranial recordings that are associated with contextual semantic manipulations that lead to N400 effects. (shrink)

In this contribution we focus on one phenomenon that has a special role in pragmatic theorizing, namely metaphor, and select two issues deriving from theoretical models and prone to be tested experimentally. The first issue concerns the comprehension procedure, that is whether access to metaphorical meaning goes through a mandatory literal stage and thus is indirect, as predicted by a Gricean inspired account, or rather is retrieved directly. The question will be discussed by referring to behavioral and neurophysiological studies, which (...) advanced our understanding of the time course of metaphorical interpretation but proved not fully suitable to answer the question. The second issue revolves around the cognitive architecture of the pragmatic system as it operates in the case of metaphor comprehension. We will illustrate the contribution that functional neuroimaging, coupled with clinical investigations can provide to fine-tune the architecture of the system responsible for metaphor processing. Some outstanding questions are highlighted in the final part, aiming at sketching our interpretation of the experimental pragmatic enterprise. (shrink)

_Thoughts and Utterances_ is the first sustained investigation of two distinctions which are fundamental to all theories of utterance understanding: the semantics/pragmatics distinction and the distinction between what is explicitly communicated and what is implicitly communicated.

Comprehenders often need to go beyond conventional word senses to obtain an appropriate interpretation of an expression. We report an experiment examining the processing of standard metonymies (The gentleman read Dickens) and logical metonymies (The gentleman began Dickens), contrasting both to the processing of control expressions with a conventional interpretation (The gentleman met Dickens). Eye movement measures during reading indicated that standard (producer‐for‐product) metonymies were not more costly to interpret than conventional expressions, but logical metonymies were more costly to interpret (...) than both standard metonymies and conventional expressions. These results indicate that constructing alternative senses is sometimes taxing and that not all types of deferred interpretations are processed in the same way. The results suggest that a critical factor in determining the attendant cost of constructing alternative senses is whether compositional operations must generate unexpressed semantic structure to realize an extended sense of an expression. (shrink)

While cognitive linguists have been successful at providing accounts of the stable knowledge structures (conceptual metaphors) that give rise to figurative language, and the conceptual mechanisms that manipulate these knowledge structures (conceptual blending), relatively less effort has been thus far devoted to the nature of the linguistic mechanisms involved in figurative language understanding. This paper presents a theoretical account of figurative language understanding, examining metaphor and metonymy in particular. This account is situated within the Theory of Lexical Concepts and Cognitive (...) Models (LCCM Theory). LCCM Theory (Evans, Cognitive Linguistics 17: 491–534, 2006, How words mean: Lexical concepts, cognitive models and meaning construction, Oxford University Press, 2009b) is a cognitively realistic model of lexical representation and semantic compositionality, providing, it is argued, an account of figurative language which complements the ‘backstage’ cognition perspective of Conceptual Blending Theory. It also integrates the notion of conceptual metaphor within the account provided of figurative language understanding. The paper introduces the key mechanisms involved in figurative language understanding arising from language use. The paper also provides a programmatic account of how conceptual metaphors are integrated with linguistic knowledge in figurative language use. It is argued the present proposals flesh out a key aspect of the conceptual integration perspective promoted by Fauconnier and Turner, with which LCCM Theory is continuous. In part, the paper attempts to advance the prospect of a ‘joined up’ cognitive linguistic account of figurative language understanding. (shrink)