Figurative language provides a testing bed for
language processing in general, since it requires speakers to
utilize a sophisticated range of linguistic, pragmatic and cognitive
skills to derive an appropriate interpretation. The toolkit of
psycholinguistics, where precise measurements of behavioural
responses help to build a model of underlying cognitive processes,
can enrich our understanding of this complex topic. Two techniques
that have been fruitfully applied to the study of figurative
language are cross-modal priming and eye-tracking. Drawing on a
range of example studies from the literature, this chapter will
demonstrate how figurative language research can benefit from the
application of psycholinguistic techniques. It concludes with a
consideration of how experimental results can be interpreted against
existing theories and models.
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