Understanding figures of speech

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I don't understand how exactly not understanding figures of speech is possible.

For example:

When I was reading something in a foreign language recently I came across the sentence "They sent her a blue letter". The first thing that occurred to me was an image of a light blue sheet of paper with words on it and an envelope also of light blue paper. I thought "Why would they send her a blue letter?". Next I thought "This must mean something symbolic, what can it be?" Blue sometimes means "sad", sometimes "sexually explicit" (as in "blue movie") and I suppose it can mean "cold" because people are supposed to go blue when they freeze and in meteorological maps blue areas are usually cold ones and red ones hot.

Next I thought "What does the context suggest?"- The context was about a woman displeasing her employers. So I then thought "What kind of letter does someone get when they displease their employers?" "Either a warning or a letter firing them". I couldn't tell which of the two it was but I assumed that in the past at some point people sent letters on blue paper to warn or fire employees. I asked someone what the expression meant and they said it meant to fire someone. I still don't know whether someone actually gets a letter on blue paper when they are fired or whether it just means "fired" without anything blue actually being sent.

So let's suppose it just means "fired" nowadays, regardless of whether anything is sent or whether if something is sent it is blue.

So now I have these two expressions, "to fire" and "to send a blue letter", and I know that they mean the same. Why can't I just learn that the one means the same as the other? Let's suppose there is an expression "bububu" and someone uses it to mean "to fire"- I can be told that "bububued" means "fired" and understand that whenever anyone says "Bill bububued Bob" they mean that Bill fired Bob. I can (and do) do exactly the same with "send a blue letter", which means that in future I won't puzzle about what it means. (Even if I don't know whether or not at the time the book was written people did still really send letters on blue paper when they fired people).

I suppose my point is that once you have had the meaning of a figure of speech explained to you it seems to be just like learning any other new word. You just need to remember the meaning. So I don't really understand how one can fail to understand a figure of speech once you have been told what it means (unless you just forget the explanation and have to start all over again).

If anyone has a good (and intelligible) explanation of how THEY would think differently to the process I have described in this post I'd be really interested to hear.

I memorize what phrases mean because it's just like learning a second language so I also have a hard time grasping how can someone have a hard time with them unless they kept forgetting the meaning of it. You memorize them. Sometimes I love phrases because they give me funny images in my head or because I like the sound of them like "knocked up" when someone gets pregnant.

Also getting the pink slip or being sacked means fired also. I still picture someone being handed the pink slip or someone being put in a sack and it being tied up.

I understand figures of speech once they have been eggsplained to me, no problem. I remember the eggsplanations too, no problem. In real-time, I might not remember to apply the eggsplanations, either not at all for the duration of the interaction or not fast enough to keep up with the conversation.

A lot of figures of speech have social-emotional meanings, and some people don't think about social-emotional things much, like an eggstremely miniscule amount compared to some other people who automatically think about social-emotional things whenever anything is brought up, so the non-social-emotional thinkers will make the physical interpretations of the blue letter being a letter on blue paper. This is the default interpretation for them whenever a blue letter is mentioned, and they have to consciously apply the social-emotional meaning of being fired on top of that, so there might be a delay in understanding the figure of speech that someone else might understand right away as being fired without even thinking about the color of the paper. Once you start thinking along physical lines, you tend to think along these lines for awhile. Like you're seeing in your mind the blue paper, then the fibers in the paper, and the writing on the paper, and the border areas between the ink and the uninked paper, and the handwriting curlicues, this list is endless, it could even involve smelling and tasting the paper and ink in your mind. And this takes time and prevents you from applying the social-emotional meaning, even if you know that there is one to be applied and you could pull that out of your memory, no problem, if only you were not now imaginarily flicking your imaginary forked tongue at the newly appeared imaginary gnat walking across the "We regret to inform you that..."

Also, there is what I call the "glomming effect", which is that whenever some idea is established in my head, like a blue letter being a letter on blue paper and all the imaginary stuff that comes with it, it is really hard to get rid of it when I need to for to make a different interpretation. It tends to stick and block off other interpretations, which may eggsplain why I would fail to get a figure of speech that I have heard over and over and over.

I'm occasionally a tad slower than the average NT to interpret a metaphor if someone is making it up on the fly during conversation. As in during an "If you know what I mean" sort of conversation...I might not "get what you mean" without really thinking about it for a moment. Even then sometimes I get lost because I tend to interpret things literally in my mind. But as for very common figures of speech, like "I get the butterflies when I see Susan" or "Joe is such a pig!" I get those easily because they're very common and I've heard them a million times.

Also, it is infinitely easier to understand metaphor and allegory when reading text, like what you described, because I have time to look at the context and figure it out.

I can follow your line of reasoning, but I think many people cannot, for many people just actually trying to figure out what something means doesn't occur and they just ask, or they don't understand and pretend they do so they don't look stupid. Their response is a social one, to ask someone or to pretend they know to avoid social embarrassment.

It is first nature to me to identify all possible/likely outcomes related to a specific scenario, I can then apply this to the situation to identify the meaning, potential outcomes, etc. etc. I do this so much so that sometimes I will just go over scenarios in my head and work out action plans ahead of time.

Its a really hard thing to think about, as this is how I work, and its hard to think other people don't work this way, how can they not, it just seems crazy. Imagine not being able to follow basic logic and reasoning to come to a correct conclusion.

Of course you could look at it the other way, they expect people to be able to deal with emotions and to act in some emotional way to each other, its an area which is entirely alien to me, and I guess the way I think about that, is the way they think about logic and reasoning thing that seems as natural to me as breathing.

I don't have many problems with these idioms and phrases. No problems recognising them or using them. What I find odd though is I always get a quick visual recollection of the literal meaning.

I'm really good at developing my own analogies, non-linear thinking might help with this.

Jason

I understand the meaning once it is explained (although sometimes that makes me think about how horrible a metaphor it is). However, when I hear the figure of speech in a different context (different tone of voice, inflection, new environment etc), I might not realize that I should possess the phrase through my internal "figure of speech" dictionary, this may cause me to blurt out comments that make no sense unless you realize I am responding to the literal meaning.

I also have trouble with some figures of speech that seem to make no sense. Recently in the US news a certain unnamed politician has been saying "there is no sliver bullet" frequently. This is a horrible metaphor, you can make and shoot silver bullets, but there are no werewolves that need to be shot (assuming the werewolves are bad, and out to kill you). Apparently this is phrase is supposed to mean that there is no quick fix, but nothing in the implied reference refers to a quick fix. After all, the quickest way to kill a werewolf would be decapitation.
Perhaps this is just my problem, after all that is not the only figure of speech that I become frustrated with because it is a bad metaphor.

In a case of the term 'blue letter' coming up in social situations I would most likely just nod and pretend that I know what in the hell they are talking about, even though I don't.

Of course now I know what blue letter means but my first thought was a letter on blue writing paper or ink.

I guess a blue letter is like a pink slip.

_________________
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I think the problem is less of not understanding figures of speech and more not knowing what meaning is being used, or it could just be stubbornly following all of the "rules". Also, it may be harder to learn the alternate meanings in the first place.

In the uk I can think of similar examples, to the blue letter:

P45 - which means a sacking, this is the government tax form code given when your employment ceases.

Dear John letter - your dumped by your lover.

Jason