Figuring Out Figuration

Peña-Cervel's study covers a wide range of the traditional figures of speech that rhetoric has long catalogued. Rather than simply listing them, it examines the cognitive processes behind each figure and shows how those processes lead to different effects in communication.

Drawing on systematic linguistic evidence, the book offers new definitions for every figure it treats and makes explicit how the figures depend on one another. Hypallage, antonomasia, anthimeria and merism are analyzed as variants of metonymy, while analogy, paragon and allegory are treated as variants of metaphor. The study also gives particular attention to how several figures combine into more complex conceptual configurations.

The work further sets out the principles that determine when a figurative expression is felicitous, or successful in context. Linking pragmatics with cognition throughout, it builds a broad, unified framework for analyzing figurative language.