ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a historical sketch of the intellectual background for recent psychological research on figurative language. The 1970s have seen the renaissance of figurative language. Treatments of figurative language within the experimental framework include the post-Content psychology of Karl Buhler; the mental testing movement, developed by Alfred Binet, V. Henri, and H. A. Simon, and redirected by J. Piaget; Gestalt psychology as interpreted by Werner and Asch; and the Neo-Behavioristic writings of Osgood and Brown. Much of the research on figurative language represents a reaction against linguistics. The 1960s were a major contribution to the discontinuity, being practically bereft of experimental analyses of figurative language. Indeed, the 1970s have seen an explosion of interest in figurative language. At least two conferences on metaphor have been held, the Illinois Conference on Metaphor and Thought in 1977 and the Interdisciplinary Conference on Metaphor at the University of California, Davis, in 1978.
