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What makes a Figure
Rethinking figurativity
This volume presents works seeking to re-think the very nature and scope of figurativity, calling into attention some of the received tenets in accounts of figurativity, both as a holistic category and for individual types and families of figures, but also attempting to expand upon the current scope of figurative theorizing. The works presented here investigate a wider array of figures than the typically-studied tropes of metaphor, irony, and metonymy, and they address broad issues such as figurativity writ large (what figurativity actually is and does, including how embodied it is), multimodality, contiguity of figurative forms, and furthering our consideration of the ingredients of irony. It should appeal to any scholar interested in figurativity in all its expansive guises.
[Figurative Thought and Language, 19] 2025. vi, 322 pp.
Publishing status: Available
Published online on 28 October 2025
Published online on 28 October 2025
© John Benjamins
Table of Contents
- Introduction: What makes a Figure?Herbert L. Colston | pp. 1–11
- Section I. Embodiments entwined
- Chapter 1. The big figurative picture: What’s in a domain?Herbert L. Colston | pp. 14–39
- Chapter 2. Re-thinking embodiment in figuration: Lived experience or cognitive mechanism?Dorothea Horst | pp. 40–64
- Section II. Figurativity and multimodality
- Chapter 3. Sources of incongruity in advertisingMª Sandra Peña-Cervel | pp. 66–97
- Chapter 4. Multimodal meaning-making in opera: Metaphors at the intersection οf text, music, and images in Wagner’s LohengrinStamatia Gerothanasi, Nina Julich-Warpakowski and Paula Pérez-Sobrino | pp. 98–122
- Section III. Figurative contiguities
- Chapter 5. Oxymoron and its interplay with metaphor and ironyJohn Barnden | pp. 126–159
- Chapter 6. Metonymy typologies revisited: Adding cumulativity to the pictureMario Brdar and Rita Brdar-Szabó | pp. 160–193
- Chapter 7. How many metaphors can metaphor afford? An embodied view of metaphorical meaningAnna Piata and Aristea-Maria Metaxa | pp. 194–219
- Section IV. Irony: Constructions and comprehensions
- Chapter 8. What makes a verbal irony? On the development of a psycholinguistic irony comprehension taskSergio Duarte and Maity Siqueira | pp. 222–247
- Chapter 9. Understanding ironic echoingFrancisco José Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez and Inés Lozano Palacio | pp. 248–270
- Chapter 10. Irony, intersubjectivity and construal: The case of a Greek construction found in Greek Twitter about othersSophia Kefalidou | pp. 271–304
- Chapter 11. Verbal irony: Duality subjected to evaluationAngeliki Athanasiadou | pp. 305–319
- Index | pp. 321–322