An introduction to essays in this volume, which addresses issues of rhetorical figures as primary objects of linguistics research, stresses renewed interest in figures of speech in discourse linguistics, text semantics, cognitive linguistics, lexical semantics, and pragmatics. It is suggested that some rhetorical figures represent rule-governed creativity and therefore belong to linguistic competence, whereas other figures represent rule-changing creativity and are therefore part of performance. A constant oscillation between innovative and fixed expressions is noted in this domain of study. A chronologicaltext semantics, cognitive linguistics, lexical semantics, and pragmatics dedicated to rhetorical topics since 1970 (LLBA, J. Hitchcock, Accession Number 9611872, (c) CSA [1994]. All rights reserved.)