Pragmatic and Psycholinguistic Interpretation of Metaphorical language Comprehension

Key words: 
• metaphor；Metaphorical language； comprehension； pragmatics；psycholinguistics

Abstract: There are different interpretations on metaphorical language comprehension in literature. Pragmatic view suggests that metaphorical language comes as violations of conversational maxims and additional inferences must be made to derive metaphorical meanings that are contextually appropriate. Psycholinguists hold that metaphor is a means of conceptualizing people's world knowledge and experience, reflecting a common mode of thought and cognition, and it does not need additional cognitive process to understand metaphorical language. Anyway, the multi－disciplinary research on metaphorical language will certainly offer us a better knowledge of how metaphorical language is comprehended.