The human ability to think non-literally has attracted the interest of various scholars for thousands of years. Over the centuries, they have defined and studied an extensive variety of tropes, such as metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, allegory, and irony, in terms of their communicative effectiveness and stylistic aesthetics and basically interpreted these simply as figurative linguistic expressions and mere flourishes adding flavour to underlying non-figurative content. Today, figurativity is understood as constitutive of various processes of human comprehension of the world, human communicative interactions, and everyday human functioning. This volume constitutes a representative selection of studies that provide novel answers to the open questions of how non-literal thought and non-literal expression in various media and discourses (co-)exist. The book focuses on figurative cognitive operations enabling non-literal thought, language and other semiotic expressions. The unique set of viewpoints and authors’ contributions upholds the cognitive approach to figurativity; it positions figurativity in various discursive environments, compares and contrasts figurativity in various languages and cultures, and traces the multimodal interplay of figurativity.

The human ability to think non-literally has attracted the interest of various scholars for thousands of years. Over the centuries, they have defined and studied an extensive variety of tropes, such as metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, allegory, and irony, in terms of their communicative effectiveness and stylistic aesthetics and basically interpreted these simply as figurative linguistic expressions and mere flourishes adding flavour to underlying non-figurative content. Today, figurativity is understood as constitutive of various processes of human comprehension of the world, human communicative interactions, and everyday human functioning. This volume constitutes a representative selection of studies that provide novel answers to the open questions of how non-literal thought and non-literal expression in various media and discourses (co-)exist. The book focuses on figurative cognitive operations enabling non-literal thought, language and other semiotic expressions. The unique set of viewpoints and authorsâ (TM) contributions upholds the cognitive approach to figurativity; it positions figurativity in various discursive environments, compares and contrasts figurativity in various languages and cultures, and traces the multimodal interplay of figurativity.

During L2 vocabulary instruction, figurative language frustrates even highly proficient users who find it difficult to cope with non-literal expressions, such as metaphors, metonymies, and idioms. Given that figurative language is closely associated with enhanced L2 communicative competence, this volume brings together theory and teaching applications, shedding light on the comprehension and production of figurative language in a foreign language context.