`Great start . I'm a ``newbie`` (a.k.a.: F.N.G.) to Wikipedia, so bear with me. I'd be glad to communicate with you on this article/subject. Here's why I've deleted/replaced a couple of your phrases/sentences:  ``...figurative language uses more poetic senses.``  Although it's used a lot in poetry, figurative language is used in a lot more contexts than just poetry. When I shake my fist at someone on the freeway and call them an ``a__hole,`` I'm using figurative language (the figure of speech is synecdoche) without being poetic in any sense of the word.  ``In literal language, truth conditions work out well, while in figurative language, they may not.``   IMO the definition of terms in this sentence will be unclear to most general readers of an encyclopedia. What are ``truth conditions``? If it's a technical term, we'd better define it.  Also, I moved the following to this page  - == To add ==  * Why would someone want to divide language into literal and figurative? What is gained thereby? (Lakoff provides some insight here.) * Why would people prefer not to view language with this divide? * How does this connect to theories of truth?``  -  These are all needed additions. The last one, especially, shows the importance and relevance of this subject to a broad range of disciplines, including theories of knowledge, cognition, language development, etc., etc.  And now....here's an explanations for one of my suspect assertions -)  ``Some have boiled down the more than two hundred and fifty figures described in classical and traditional linguistics into two: metaphor and metonymy.``  I know this from research, and my additions to Further Reading document reflect the ``classical and traditional`` end of this statement. But I need to go back and document which modern analyses have done the boiling specifically.  Tuesday, July 8, 2003, 12:45 CDT.`