Figures of Speech

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So, I keep hearing about autistic people not understanding figures of speech, but it perplexes me. If someone says, "Never look a gift horse in the mouth", wouldn't everyone need to have that phrase explained to them in order to understand it, particularly if they've never heard it before? Do neurotypical people really understand these types of sayings without explanation?

These types of questions about literal language and not understanding figures of speech show up on many of the online autism tests, so I'm guessing that there's something to it. I just don't know how this could be possible.

I think maybe the difference is that an NT would hear it and instinctively recognise that an idiom was being used, with the gift horse they would put together the facts that the conversation was not about a horse and that language often involves the use of idioms and their brain would go ping idiom. They might even be able to deduce, from the context, what the idiom means. It isn't necessary to know its origins to get the meaning but I imagine most people would need its origins explained these days.

I think some people with ASD don't get that ping idiom moment so they're looking around for the horse that suddenly showed up and wondering what happened to the conversation they thought they were having.

You might wonder why, after a few times of this happening, they don't learn to spot it. I imagine it's a bit like being off-balance - you never really get used to being unexpectedly off-balance.

I thought looking for a needle in a haystack was a real thing.
I thought the song "I Shot the Sheriff" meant Eric Clapton should be arrested.

I took everything literally.

There is the denotation and then there is the connotation.

The connotation is what folks use the expression to mean.

The denotation is the original literal thing that the figure of speech refers to.

Children, NT as well as AS, tend to take things literally. But as you grow up you cotton on that these puzzling grown up expressions are metaphors, and you cotton to what the connotation is from the context (what theyre using the expression to mean).

Put if you get nosey and ask the grown ups what the expression LITERALLY means (the origin -the thing it refers to) half of the time even most grown ups dont know WTF the things they themselves say LITERALLY mean (like "that really gets my goat", "the whole nine yards:).

"Dont look a gift horse in the mouth" isnt so bad. The connotation is: dont assess a gift they way you would a potential purchase. just be grateful, or at least act that way. And even a modern suburban kid can kinda guess that its a reference to how farmers used to check out a horse's teeth to assess the potential draft animal's health (like 'kicking a cars tires" which is also an anachronism now)when shopping around.

But some things (like a stitch in time, and get my goat) you cant even figure out the original literal origin without scholarly help.

Normal people realize that a lot of things said aren't exactly accurate and you need to read body language to get the real meaning. In person meetings are highly valued by normal people and they will spend lots of money to attend gatherings.

Young kids are literal. But most people after hearing and idiom being used a few times understand the in real life meaning not the literal meaning. It takes us longer to figure it out if we can figure it it out at all.

I used to understand idioms and figures of speech but not know the scholarly interpretations of many of them. Though I am familiar with most of the meanings, now that I am older & wiser.

I never noticed any problem with figures of speech, except that I didn't like the idea when they taught us about them at school. They told us that "John was an eel at play" was a metaphor, and meant "John played like an eel" - in which case, I thought, why not just say that instead of getting all airy-fairy about it? But I didn't find them hard to understand.

"Never look a gift horse in the mouth" might have been easier in the days when people were more familiar with horses and how to judge their health and quality. These days it takes a bit more thought to work it out, but it's not impossible. It's just a tad cryptic.

Everybody knows what a flying saucer is supposed to be, very few people think it literally means a saucer.

I don't think I had trouble with figures of speech, maybe because English people never get to the point or say what they really mean. Everything with us is a figure of speech or an idiom.

Same with sarcasm, most English people are well versed in sarcasm from birth, it's our preferred form of communication.

Another sarcastic Brit here!

Yes, never had a problem myself. Although I can see how metaphors and idioms can slow us down a bit due to reductionist thinking, bottom-up. Can cause some auditory processing delay perhaps.

I take things people say literally (not figures of speech, which I can recognize and just ask to be explained), and apparently that's not normal either. I get sarcasm, I'm just dumb or something when people don't inflect super hard.
I originally thought I wasn't autistic because I used similes (in writing) and those are figures of speech. I never used metaphors though, because they don't make sense a lot of the time and sound like blatant lies.
Then I read "The Incident with the Dog in the Nighttime." Yeah, that explained some things.

I think we must be one of the most sarcastic nations mustn't we.

Yes, brought up in the golden age of self-deprecating British humour.

But I feel sorry for the latest generation. We seem to have spawned a bunch of miserable poe-faced wastrels.

Until I came to this site, I didn't even really think about this. Americans use idioms a LOT. SOME people really DON'T understand them at all. A popular phrase is "I couldn't care less"! MANY MANY MANY people apparently don't understand that phrase AT ALL! They say "I could care less"! The meaning of the phrase is that the situation is SO WITHOUT MERIT that you seriously couldn't care ANY less about it! If you COULD care less, it implies that you feel it DID have some merit!

Little kids may even mispronounce words they know well when saying an idiom, because someone that didn't know the idiom made mistakes.

I received an email the other day saying that something was an 'unnecessary cost' , I asked why would it be a waste of money, they got arsey with me and quoted the phrase for clarification to prove they did not say it's a waste of money.

WTF someone please explain to me how the two phrases are different.

Beats the heck outta me!