ABSTRACT
Over the course of the past several decades, research on figurative language has been flourishing in psychology and related fields (for recent reviews, see Cacciari & Glucksberg, 1994; Gibbs, 1994a, 1994b; Kreuz & Roberts, 1993). One of the most noteworthy outcomes of this research is the recognition that figurative language is not deviant—not a form of communication that requires special or additional cognitive processes to understand and that occurs only in special circumstances. Rather, figurative language is ubiquitous in many forms d discourse (e.g., Mio & Katz, 1996), no more difficult to understand in context than literal language (e.g., Gibbs, 1983, 1986; Glucksberg, Gildea & Bookin, 1982), and, according to some theorists, fundamental to the way people conceptualize the world (Gibbs, 1979, 1994b; Kovecses, 1986; Lakoff, 1987; Lakoff & Johnson, 1980).
