Table of Contents

1. Introduction and Overview; 2. Thinking and Speaking Literally; 3. Figurative Language Understanding: A Special Process?; 4. Metaphor in Language and Thought; 5. Understanding Metaphorical Expressions; 6. Idiomaticity; 7. Metonymy; 8. Irony; 9. The Poetic Minds of Children; 10. Implications and Future Directions.

Promotional Information

In this bold new work, Ray Gibbs demonstrates that human cognition is deeply poetic and that figurative imagination constitutes the way we understand ourselves and the world in which we live.

Reviews

"...accessible to the uninitiated reader and still maintains the highest scholarly standards...Anyone who is interested in the relationship between language and thought should read this book, and they will not be disappointed." Boaz Keysar, Contemporary Psychology "...remarkable both for its comprehensive treatment of its subject and for the way it puts poetics, that is, figurative thought (the variety of tropes), at the very heart of mental operations and social interactions...strongly recommended." James W. Fernandez, American Anthropologist