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Title: The Literal and Nonliteral in Language and Thought

The Literal and Nonliteral in Language and Thought

by Seana Coulson (Volume editor) Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk (Volume editor)
©2005 Conference proceedings 402 Pages
Linguistics
Series: Łódź Studies in Language, Volume 11

Summary

The distinction between literal and nonliteral meaning can be traced back to folk models about the relationship between language and the world. According to these models, sentences can be seen as building a representation of the world they describe, and understanding a sentence means knowing how each linguistic element affects the construction of the representation. Papers in this volume connect these folk models to the more scientific notions of the literal/nonliteral distinction proposed by philosophers, linguists, and cognitive scientists. The current volume examines the literal/nonliteral distinction from a number of disciplinary and theoretical perspectives, outlining some of the problematic assumptions in traditional paradigms and pointing to promising directions for the study of meaning.

Details

Pages
402
Year
2005
ISBN (Softcover)
9783631541692
Language
English
Keywords
Bedeutung Sprache Nichtverbale Kommunikation Logroño (2003) Cognitive linguistic Kongress Construction grammar Abstract meaning
Published
Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Wien, 2005. 402 pp., num. fig.

Biographical notes

Seana Coulson (Volume editor) Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk (Volume editor)

The Editors: Seana Coulson (Ph.D. 1997) is an associate professor in the Cognitive Science Department at the University of California, San Diego, where she heads the Brain and Cognition laboratory. Her research interests include cognitive semantics and experimental pragmatics, with an emphasis on the cognitive and neural underpinnings of figurative language comprehension. She is on the editorial board of Cognitive Linguistics and Annual Review of Cognitive Linguistics. Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk (Ph.D. 1972, Dr habil. 1987) is professor of English language and linguistics at the University of Łódź, where she holds the position of professor ordinarius and chair of English language. She is also honorary professor in linguistics and modern English language at the University of Lancaster. Her research interests are primarily in semantics and pragmatics of natural language, corpus linguistics and their applications in translation studies and lexicography. She has published books and papers in the area of Cognitive Linguistics and has been President of the Polish Cognitive Linguistics Association since 2002.

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Title: The Literal and Nonliteral in Language and Thought