Using figurative language

"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 (writing) figuratively, and concomitantly, meaning effects wrought by figurative language usage. These 'pragmatic effects' arise from many kinds of figurative language including metaphors (e.g. 'This computer is a dinosaur'), verbal irony (e.g. 'Nice place you got here'), idioms (e.g. 'Bite the bullet'), proverbs (e.g. 'Don't put all your eggs in one basket') 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."--

1.Why Don't People Say What They Mean? Wealth and Stealth -- Brief Overview -- Introduction of Themes -- Pragmatic Meaning and Pragmatic Effects -- Psychology and Pragmatics -- Figurative Language as a Complex Social Phenomenon -- Complexity Approaches -- Caveats -- Pop Goes the Examples -- Problems with Problems -- Figurative Name Calling -- A Final Theme: Rorschach Figures -- 2.What Is a Pragmatic Effect? Multidisciplinarity and Scope -- Pragmatic Effects: A Case Study -- Defining a Pragmatic Effect -- Speech Act Theory -- Gricean Theory -- Relevance Theory -- Philosophical Accounts -- Inferences -- Causal Antecedent and Causal Consequent Inferences -- Superordinate Goal, Thematic and Additudinal Inferences -- Emotion Inferences -- Instantiation of Noun Category and Instrumental Inferences -- Subordinate Goal/Action Inferences -- How Are Pragmatic Effects Unlike Implicatures, Positive Cognitive Effects, Interpretive Hypotheses, or Inferences? -- Structural Effects -- Embodied Effects -- Psychological Effects -- Sociocultural Effects -- Social Knowledge about Speakers/Hearers -- Shared Knowledge among Interlocutors -- Familiarity in Interlocutors -- Enablement of Social Informati…