On Our Mind: Salience, Context, and Figurative LanguageHow do we learn to produce and comprehend non-literal language? Competing theories have only partially accounted for the variety of language comprehension evoked in metaphor, irony, and jokes. Rachel Giora has developed a novel and comprehensive theory, the Graded Salience Hypothesis, to explain figuative language comprehension. Giora contends that the salience of meanings (i.e., the cognitive priority we ascribe to words encoded in our mental lexicon) has the primary role in language comprehension and production. |
Contents
| 1 | |
| 11 | |
Lexical Access | 37 |
Irony | 59 |
Metaphors and Idioms | 101 |
Jokes | 165 |
Innovation | 174 |
Evidence from Other Research | 183 |
Coda Unaddressed Questions Food for Future Thought | 194 |
Notes | 199 |
References | 211 |
Author Index | 241 |
| 249 | |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
access phase According ambiguous word assumes chapter cloze probability compatible context biased context effects contextual information contextually appropriate meaning contextually incompatible meanings contrast conventional DARRYL direct access view discourse example eye tracking familiar idioms familiar ironies faster figurative findings Gernsbacher Gibbs Giora & Fein Glucksberg graded salience hypothesis hemisphere homograph idiomatic meaning inappropriate indirect negation view initial processes instance intended meaning interstimulus interval involve ironic meaning jokes Keysar Kutas less familiar metaphors less salient meaning lexical access lexical ambiguity lexical processes linguistic literal and nonliteral literal interpretation literally biasing context longer to read mental lexicon metaphoric meaning metonymic milliseconds modular view nonliteral language nonsalient novel optimal innovation PAMELA participants Peleg phase polysemous predictive priming Psycholinguistic Rayner regardless of context relevant response retained salient information Similarly speaker Sperber standard pragmatic model suggest supportive context Swinney syntactic ambiguity Tanenhaus target sentence tion took longer unfamiliar utterances
Popular passages
Page 6 - ... quite a pleasant woman. Mr. Furr was quite a pleasant man. Helen Furr had quite a pleasant voice a voice quite worth cultivating. She did not mind working. She worked to cultivate her voice. She did not find it gay living in the same place where she had always been living. She went to a place where some were cultivating something, voices and other things needing cultivating. She met Georgine Skeene there who was cultivating her voice which some thought was quite a pleasant one. Helen Furr and...
Page 7 - They were both gay there, they were regularly working there both of them cultivating their voices there, they were both gay there. Georgine Skeene was gay there and she was regular, regular in being gay, regular in not being gay, regular in being a gay one who was one not being gay longer than was needed to be one being quite a gay one. They were both gay then there and both working there then. They were in a way both gay there where there were many cultivating something. They were both regular in...
Page 6 - Helen Furr had quite a pleasant home. Mrs. Furr was quite a pleasant woman. Mr. Furr was quite a pleasant man. Helen Furr had quite a pleasant voice, a voice quite worth cultivating. She did not mind working. She worked to cultivate her voice.
Page 7 - ... not being gay longer than was needed to be one being quite a gay one. They were both gay then there and both working there then. They were in a way both gay there where there were many cultivating something. They were both regular in being gay there. Helen Furr was gay there, she was gayer and gayer there and really she was just gay there, she was gayer and gayer there, that is to say she found ways of being gay there that she...
Page 213 - Bassili, JN, & Smith. MC (1986). On the spontaneity of trait attribution: Converging evidence for the role of cognitive strategy.