Chapter 33
Idiomaticity and Human Cognition
Raymond W. Gibbs Jr.
Figurative language has finally become a respectable area of study in the
cognitive sciences. Most of the emphasis in this research effort has been on the
interpretation of metaphor. However, idiomaticity has recently become a sig-
nificant topic of concern in psycholinguistics, linguistics, developmental psy-
chology, neuropsychology, and computer science (cf. Cacciari & Tabossi 1993).
This interest in idiomaticity is well founded, given that American English, for
example, contains many thousands of formulaic phrases and expressions that
the ordinary speaker must somehow learn (as is evident in the many idiom and
slang dictionaries currently available).
People are not considered competent speakers of a language until they mas-
ter the various cliche ́d, idiomatic expressions that are ubiquitous in everyday
discourse. Consider for a moment the following idiomatic expressions that are
currently used by American college students (Munro 1989).
(1) a. From the way he was eyeing that girl, it was obvious that he
was going to bust a move.
b. My friends rampaged through the kitchen when they got the
munchies.
c. I thought he was so handsome that I wanted to jump his bones.
d. My boss was really upset and I wish he’d take a chill pill.
Do you understand what phrases such asbust a move, have the munchies,or
take a chill pillmean? Why do speakers create and use these particular phrases
or even more common phrases such asblow your stack, spill the beans, get pissed
off, kick the bucket,orpop the question?Most scholars traditionally assume that
idioms like these may have once been metaphorical in their origins but have
lost their metaphoricity over time and now exist in the speakers’ mental lexi-
consasstockformulasoras‘‘dead’’metaphors.Justasspeakersnolonger
viewface of the clockorarm of a chairas metaphoric, few contemporary people
recognize phrases such ashave the munchiesorto get pissed offas particularly
creative or metaphoric. For this reason, idioms are mostly thought to have rel-
atively simple interpretations and, unlike metaphors, do not resist paraphrase.
We may not know exactly why idioms mean what they do, but we understand
that idioms have brief, clear definitions.
At the same time, idiomatic phrases are traditionally seen as being distinct
from ordinary literal language because they are noncompositional in that their
From chapter 5 inIdioms :Structural and Psychological Perspectives, ed. Martin Everaert et al. (Hills-
dale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1995), 97–116. Reprinted with permission.