Figurative Language Comprehension

<p>Figurative language such as verbal irony metaphor hyperbole idioms and other forms is an increasingly important subfield within the empirical study of language comprehension and use. <i>Figurative Language Comprehension: Social and Cultural Influences</i> is an edited scholarly book that ties together recent research concerning the social and cultural influences on figurative language cognition. These influences include gender cultural differences economic status and inter-group effects among others. The effects these influences have on people's use comprehension and even processing of figurative language comprise the main theme of this volume. No other book offers such a look at the social and cultural influences on a whole family of figurative forms at several levels of cognition. <br><br>This volume is of great interest to scholars and professionals in the disciplines of social and cognitive psychology psycholinguistics and second language acquisition as well as cognitive and other fields of linguistics where scholars have interests in pragmatics metaphor symbol discourse and narrative. Some knowledge of the empirical and experimental methods used in language research as well as some familiarity with theories underlying the use comprehension and processing of figurative language would be helpful to readers of this book.</p>