In this chapter we take a closer look at figurative language from a pragmatic perspective. Figurative language is also often associated with literary language. However, as we shall see, from a pragmatic perspective, non-literal use of language extends far beyond the devices and tropes traditionally associated with rhetoric and poetry. The inferential processes that we employ to interpret metaphors, irony, and other figuratively used language, are part of a more general pragmatic system. Non-literal use of language is pervasive, and the processing of non-literal language plays a central role in utterance interpretation. We focus on metaphor, hyperbole, and irony, outlining several of the most influential pragmatic approaches to the analyses of these and starting with the Gricean account. The field of lexical pragmatics is introduced, and a range of examples are discussed to illustrate just how often we use language ‘loosely’. This approach is then applied to approximations, hyperbole, and metaphor. In the second half of the chapter, attention turns to irony, and two leading analyses are introduced and then compared: irony as pretence and irony as echoic use.

Jary and Kissine examine the meaning of imperative sentences, taking the existing relevance-theoretic semantic analysis, in terms of the desirability and potentiality of the described state of affairs, as their point of departure. In their view, a complete account of the interpretation of imperatives has to explain how they can result in the addressee forming an intention to perform an action, and this requires the theory to make room for ‘action representations’ (in addition to factual representations, such as assumptions). They claim that the imperative form is uniquely specified to interface with such action representations.

Ingrid Lossius Falkum uses data from young children’s communicative development to argue that metaphor and metonymy rely on different pragmatic mechanisms. Metaphor and metonymy do have certain characteristics in common: they both target individual words or phrases, they both contribute content to the proposition explicitly expressed, and they both lie on a continuum of literal and figurative uses. However, developmental data suggests that early metonymic uses may be the result of a more basic process than metaphorical uses, one in which the child exploits salient associative relations to compensate for gaps in vocabulary.

Robyn Carston discusses the relevance-based on-line construction of ad hoc concepts (or occasion-specific senses), which she takes to be the source of much semantic polysemy (where words are stored with a cluster of related senses). In an attempt to give a full account of polysemy, one that marries the pragmatics of word meaning with the demands of grammar, Carston advocates a split view of the lexicon, with one part narrowly linguistic and computational, and the other an ever-evolving store of communicational units.

Ingrid Lossius Falkum uses data from young children’s communicative development to argue that metaphor and metonymy rely on different pragmatic mechanisms. Metaphor and metonymy do have certain characteristics in common: they both target individual words or phrases, they both contribute content to the proposition explicitly expressed, and they both lie on a continuum of literal and figurative uses. However, developmental data suggests that early metonymic uses may be the result of a more basic process than metaphorical uses, one in which the child exploits salient associative relations to compensate for gaps in vocabulary.