Talk:Literal and figurative language

Philosophy: Logic / Language Stub‑class Low‑importance

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Defintion

Great start Ryguasu. I'm a "newbie" (a.k.a.: F.N.G.) to Wikipedia, so bear with me. I'd be glad to communicate with you on this article/subject.

Here's why I've deleted/replaced a couple of your phrases/sentences: XD

"...figurative language uses more poetic senses."

Although it's used a lot in poetic senses, figurative language is used in a lot more contexts than just poetic-sounding language. When I shake my fist at someone on the freeway and call them an "a__hole," I'm using figurative language (the figure of speech is synecdoche) without being poetic sounding in any sense of the word.

"In literal language, truth conditions work out well, while in figurative language, they may not."

IMO the definition of terms in this sentence will be unclear to most general readers of an encyclopedia. What are "truth conditions"? If it's a technical term, we'd better define it.

Also, I moved the following to this page

To add

Why would someone want to divide language into literal and figurative? What is gained thereby? (Lakoff provides some insight here.)d
Why would people prefer not to view language with this divide?
How does this connect to theories of truth?"

These are all needed additions. The last one, especially, shows the importance and relevance of this subject to a broad range of disciplines, including theories of knowledge, cognition, language development, etc., etc.

And now....here's an explanations for one of my suspect assertions :-)

"Some have boiled down the more than two hundred and fifty figures described in classical and traditional linguistics into two: metaphor and metonymy."

I know this from research, and my additions to Further Reading document reflect the "classical and traditional" end of this statement. But I need to go back and document specifically which modern analyses have done the boiling. jstanley01 Tuesday, July 8, 2003, 12:45 CDT.

Types of figurative language

Isn't it logical to add to this page a list of types of figurative langiage, such as metaphor, similie, etc.? Or is there such a list on some other term? 80.178.164.204 08:17, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Moved to discussion

Don't converse in article...203.218.79.155 21:26, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

):):):)It is a very hard type of learning and it is very hard to learn the different things that it has in it because

life is not easy and that i guess is the way that life works!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! -CULOchi