Evaluating Contemporary Models of Figurative Language Understanding

The 7 articles in this collection describe new views of figurative language understanding. These articles differ in the types of figurative language they examine and address different linguistic levels (i.e., word vs. utterance) in the models proposed. Yet the articles make important claims about the use of contextual information in inferring figurative meaning and similarities and differences in processing figurative and literal language. These models are evaluated; places where the models conflict are noted; and ways these new ideas are improvements over more general, traditional theories of figurative language understanding are suggested. Several issues and topics are also raised that are not addressed in these articles but should be of concern to figurative language scholars.