E067 · Communication & interaction
Difficulty understanding indirect or non-literal language
What might be happening when a young person understands the words someone has used but not the intended meaning behind them?
Phoenix Encyclopaedia
Overview
People frequently communicate more than the literal meaning of their words.
Everyday communication may contain:
- idioms
- metaphors
- sarcasm
- irony
- hints
- implied requests
- understatement
- humour
- expressions whose meaning depends heavily on shared context.
For example:
“Can you open the window?”
may grammatically be a question about ability while functioning socially as a request.
“It's raining cats and dogs”
cannot be understood by interpreting each word literally.
Understanding these forms of communication requires knowledge of language, context, culture and the speaker's likely intention.
A young person who finds this difficult may therefore understand every individual word while reaching a different interpretation from the speaker.
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What this might look like
A young person might:
- interpret idioms literally
- miss sarcasm or irony
- become confused by jokes that depend on double meaning
- not recognise a hinted request
- follow the literal wording rather than the adult's unstated expectation
- ask why somebody said something that others considered obvious
- become distressed when figurative language appears contradictory
- understand familiar expressions after they have been taught but struggle with new ones
- interpret ambiguous language differently from peers
- miss implied criticism or social meaning
- be accused of being pedantic when seeking precise meaning
- communicate very effectively when people say exactly what they mean.
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Developmental expression
At this stage
Early childhood
Literal understanding is developmentally expected. Young children gradually acquire figurative and socially inferred meanings through language, experience and cultural participation.
Early childhood
Literal understanding is developmentally expected. Young children gradually acquire figurative and socially inferred meanings through language, experience and cultural participation.
Middle childhood
Idioms, jokes, metaphors and implied classroom instructions become increasingly common, creating more opportunities for misunderstanding.
Early adolescence
Peer communication relies increasingly on irony, understatement, shared references and rapidly changing social language.
Later adolescence
Academic texts, workplaces and adult social interaction often assume sophisticated interpretation of ambiguity, persuasion, metaphor and unstated expectations.
Choose each stage to see how the presentation and surrounding expectations may change over time.
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Strengths and differences
A preference for explicit, literal communication can coexist with:
- precision
- honesty
- careful use of language
- strong factual understanding
- logical reasoning
- attention to wording
- willingness to challenge ambiguous instructions.
Phoenix should not imply that indirect communication is inherently better communication.
Sometimes the problem is simply that an adult has communicated unclearly and expected the young person to infer the missing information.
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Top tips for support
- Say what you mean when the information matters.
- Make expectations explicit.
- Explain unfamiliar idioms and metaphors.
- Check meaning without making the young person feel foolish.
- Avoid sarcasm as a method of correction.
- Teach figurative language in context rather than as arbitrary definitions.
- Explain how tone, context and speaker intention can alter meaning.
- Accept clarification questions.
- Distinguish an actual instruction from a social hint.
- Remember that figurative language is culturally and linguistically specific.
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Things needing careful planning
This presentation requires a particularly strong culture and language check.
Idioms, humour and indirect communication differ across communities and languages. Not understanding an unfamiliar idiom does not demonstrate an underlying difficulty if the young person has simply not encountered it.
Multilingual young people may also have strong non-literal understanding in one language and less experience with figurative expressions in another.
Nor should literal interpretation automatically be treated as synonymous with autism. Difficulties with non-literal language occur in several developmental contexts and can also be shaped by experience, vocabulary and language knowledge.
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Practical support principles
Support may include:
- explicit explanations
- examples in meaningful contexts
- visual representation
- comparison of literal and intended meanings
- teaching common curriculum idioms
- discussing speaker intention
- exploring multiple interpretations
- pre-teaching culturally unfamiliar expressions
- using clearer communication in high-stakes situations
- specialist speech-and-language support where broader language difficulties are present.
From understanding to support
Phoenix Atlas connections
Often useful
- explicit language teaching
- communication-access approaches
- visual supports
- contextualised vocabulary teaching
- social-communication support
Worth considering
- speech-and-language intervention
- structured work on inference and figurative language
- curriculum-language adaptation.
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Evidence and cautions
Research demonstrates that non-literal language is not one single ability. Studies separately examine idioms, metaphors, sarcasm and other forms of inferred meaning, and performance varies across populations and tasks. (1)
For young people with developmental language disorder, a study of 9–16-year-olds found that targeted teaching improved idiom skills, with gains maintained after intervention; both individual and classroom approaches showed benefit, although effects differed. (1)
The implication for Phoenix is practical rather than diagnostic:
Some indirect meanings can be made more accessible through explicit teaching, while important instructions can simply be communicated more clearly in the first place.
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Public evidence sources
- Idiom intervention for young people with developmental language disorder — intervention study.
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Possible explanatory lenses
Relevant possibilities include:
- receptive language
- vocabulary
- inference
- social communication
- language experience
- multilingualism
- cultural familiarity
- contextual reasoning
- attention
- working memory.
About this entry’s source
Open Beta · read the evidence notes and limitations
Source status describes the underlying material. The current site edition is Open Beta; the evidence notes and limitations remain part of the entry.