Many figurative expressions are fully conventionalized in everyday speech. Regarding the neural basis of figurative language processing, research has predominantly focused on metaphoric expressions in minimal semantic context. It remains unclear in how far metaphoric expressions during continuous text comprehension activate similar neural networks as isolated metaphors. We therefore investigate...

Neuroscience research has thoroughly studied how nonliteral language is processed during metaphor comprehension. However, it is not clear how the brain actually creates nonliteral language. Therefore, the present study for the first time investigates the neural correlates of metaphor production. Participants completed sentences by generating novel metaphors or literal synonyms during functional...

The conventionalization of figurative comparisons is one source of lexical evolution. For example, anchor once only meant a device for mooring a ship, but may now be used to describe any source of stability or confidence. Our goal is to understand this process. Following the Career of Metaphor framework, figurative mappings are interpreted through a structure-mapping process, rendering common s...

The present paper’s aim is to investigate how the participants of an online learning environment employed written language in a creative way through the spontaneous use of figurative language. The content analysis showed that figurative language was a means to express the social dimension either to refer to the self, feelings and emotions, or to conceptualize the components of the virtual learn...

Little is known about the influence of visual characteristics other than colour on flavor perception, and the complex interactions between more than two sensory modalities. This study focused on the effects of recognizability of visual (texture) information on flavor perception of odorized sweet beverages. Participants rated the perceived sweetness of odorized sucrose solutions in the presence ...

The time courses for constructing literal and figurative interpretations of simple propositions were measured with the response signal, speed-accuracy tradeoff procedure. No differences were found in comprehension speed for literal and figurative strings in a task that required judging whether a string of words was meaningful. Likewise, no differences were found in processing speed for nonsense...

The construction of a figurative interpretation for a string like Some surgeons are butchers (Gildea & Glucks-berg, 1983) has been traditionally viewed as subordinate to the construction of a literal interpretation. What Cacciari and Glucksberg (1994) refer to as the standard view of figurative processing—a view that largely stems from Searle (1979) and Grice (1975)—contends that a figurative i...

The heading figurative language subsumes multiple phenomena that can be used to perform most linguistic functions including predication, modification, and reference. Figurative language can tap into conceptual and linguistic knowledge (as in the case of idioms, metaphor, and some metonymies) as well as evoke pragmatic factors in interpretation (as in indirect speech acts, humor, irony, or sarca...