Figurativity And Human Ecology

Figurativity has attracted scholars’ attention for thousands of years and yet there are still open questions concerning its nature. Figurativity and Human Ecology endorses a view of figurativity as ubiquitous in human reasoning and language, and as a key example of how a human organism and its perceived or imagined environment co-function as a system. The volume sees figurativity not only as embedded in an environment but also as a way of acting within that environment. It places figurativity within an ecological context, and approaches it as a phenomenon which cuts across bodily, psychological, linguistic, social, cultural and natural environments. Figurativity and Human Ecology will appeal to those interested in the analysis of the all-encompassing creativity of the human mind and in the methodological difficulties associated with the study of cognition.

The human ability to think non-literally has attracted the interest of various scholars for thousands of years. Over the centuries, they have defined and studied an extensive variety of tropes, such as metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, allegory, and irony, in terms of their communicative effectiveness and stylistic aesthetics and basically interpreted these simply as figurative linguistic expressions and mere flourishes adding flavour to underlying non-figurative content. Today, figurativity is understood as constitutive of various processes of human comprehension of the world, human communicative interactions, and everyday human functioning. This volume constitutes a representative selection of studies that provide novel answers to the open questions of how non-literal thought and non-literal expression in various media and discourses (co-)exist. The book focuses on figurative cognitive operations enabling non-literal thought, language and other semiotic expressions. The unique set of viewpoints and authors’ contributions upholds the cognitive approach to figurativity; it positions figurativity in various discursive environments, compares and contrasts figurativity in various languages and cultures, and traces the multimodal interplay of figurativity.

Examines the way people interact with both natural and man-made environments from many aspects of study, including biology, psychology, sociology, and environmental science.

Human Ecology is a photo book of candid and street photography that shows people in their everyday environments.