Experimental Psycholinguistics and Figurative Language: Circa 1995

Abstract

This article is a review of the methodology employed and of selected research questions found in the current experimental psycholinguistic literature on figurative language. A contrast is made between methodologies based on memory for language and those based on moment-by-moment (online) measures of processing. Research questions examined include (a) why people might use figurative language instead of a literal translation, (b) the nature of the mental representation assumed to underlie figurative language, (c) how figurative meaning is computed, and (d) the role played by conceptual structures in the understanding of tropes.