Psychological Processes Underlying Figurative Thinking

Abstract

In Chapters 1 and 2, we introduced the idea of figurative thinking and saw that the ability to engage in it is likely to be advantageous to foreign language learners in terms of vocabulary learning. In this chapter we look in more depth at the nature of figurative thinking, particularly as it applies to metaphor and metonymy. We begin by outlining several of the major theories that have been put forward to explain metaphor comprehension and production from a psychological processing perspective. Section 3.3 then outlines a set of psychological processes that foreign language learners might usefully employ to comprehend metaphor. In each case, the argument focuses initially on ways in which the process aids comprehension, but goes on to note whether it has also been shown to aid (foreign language) learning. In section 3.4, we look at the psychological processes involved in the processing of metonymy. After having suggested a range of psychological processes that language learners might use to help them think figuratively in the target language, the chapter closes, in section 3.5, with two concrete examples showing how language learners can be helped to use these psychological processes in order to understand metaphor and metonymy.