THE ALLEGED PRIORITY OF LITERAL INTERPRETATION

In this article, I argue against a widely accepted model of utterance interpretation, namely the LS model (literality-based serial model), a ccording to which the literal interpretation of an utterance (the prop osition literally expressed by that utterance) must be computed before nonliteral interpretations can be entertained. Alleged arguments in f avor of this model are shown to be fallacious, counter-examples are pr ovided, and alternative models are sketched.