COGNITIVE MECHANISMS BEHIND FIGURATIVE INTERPRETATION Of IDIOMS

Abstract

Idioms are common figurative expressions whose meanings are not strictly compositional, and their interpretation involves multiple cognitive mechanisms. This article reviews key theories in cognitive semantics and psycholinguistics to explain how idiom understanding arises from conceptual metaphor, metonymy, conceptual blending, and the salience of meanings. Conceptual metaphor theory shows how idioms often map concrete source domains onto abstract targets, enabling figurative readings. Metonymy highlights how parts of meaning can stand for related concepts within the same domain (e.g., he has to have the last word, where word stands for the act of speaking). Conceptual blending illustrates how elements of literal and figurative scenarios merge to produce new idiomatic senses. Finally, the salience hypothesis predicts that familiar, prototypical idiomatic meanings are activated first, regardless of context. Examples of English idioms such as break the ice, spill the beans, and kick the bucket illustrate these mechanisms. Overall, this analysis suggests that idiom comprehension is guided by a rich interplay of metaphorical and cognitive mappings and by the prominence of conventional meanings.