Iconicity and figurative language
We research linguistic forms that resemble the meanings of the concepts they refer to. We focus on how these iconic forms are involved in language emergence, learning and processing. We also investigate the ways in which people use figurative language including metaphor and metonymy and conventionalised forms such as idioms. We explore the functions they perform in everyday language, and the ways in which they are learned and processed.
Research areas include:
- Comprehension and production of iconicity
- Conventionalised expressions and idioms
- Figurative competence and figurative processing
- Iconicity in speech, gesture, and sign
- Language evolution
- Metaphor and metonymy
- Multimodal metaphor
- Synaesthetic metaphor
- The relationship between figurative language and emotion
- Typological diversity
Academic staff
Academic staff
- Dr Gareth Carrol - Senior Lecturer in Psycholinguistics
- Professor Jeannette Littlemore - Professor of English Language and Applied Linguistics
- Dr Gerardo Ortega - Associate Professor
- Dr Marcus Perlman - Associate Professor in English Language and Linguistics
- Professor Bodo Winter - Professor of Linguistics