A Cognitive Approach To Metonymy

Metonymy is traditionally regarded as a figure of speech. Cognitive linguistics, philosophically based on experiential realism, examines metaphor and metonymy from a new perspective. It claims that metaphor and metonymy are important ways of thinking, fundamental tools for human beings to conceptualize the world. In the past twenty years, metaphor has been widely studied as an essential way of thinking; metonymy, however, has received far less attention, though it also plays an important role in human life and occurs frequently in our languages. Adopting a cognitive point of view, it is claimed in this paper that metonymy is conceptual in nature. It is a fundamental cognitive tool. This paper explores the cognitive mechanisms of metonymy and the role metonymy plays in speech acts, and then further analyzes its functions within the framework of relevance theory.In Chapters One and Two, we review the traditional rhetorical and pragmatic views of metonymy. In traditional rhetoric, metonymy is treated as a figure of speech, and a common linguistic ornament in language. In pragmatics, metonymy is regarded as a kind of figurative language which can produce conversational implicature. But it is claimed in cognitive linguistics that metonymy is a cognitive tool based on human experience of the world. Speaking and thinking with metonymy is a pervasive phenomenon in human daily life.In Chapter Three, the cognitive mechanisms of metonymy are studied under the cognitive theories of salience, domain highlighting and ICM (idealized cognitive model). The paper holds that metonymy is a cognitive process in which one more salient aspect of an object, event or situation is used to refer to the object, idea, or event as a whole. According to Croft, metonymy is a case of domain highlighting. Domain highlighting is a consequence of many, if not all, instances of metonymy. Lakoff proposed the notion of idealized cognitive models, which are the static or dynamic mental representations of typical situations in life and their typical elements. Concepts within ICMs are related by "conceptual contiguity." The content of an ICM depends on our everyday experience, our world knowledge. Beings, things, processes, and actions that generally or ideally occur together are represented in the mind as an ICM. The notion of the ICM is very helpful for us to understand the cognitive mechanisms of metonymy. The Metonymic process operates within a single idealized cognitive model. Weanalyze metonymy-generating relationships under two general conceptual configurations: (i) Whole ICM and its parts; (ii) Parts of an ICM.Chapter Four is an exploration of the role of metonymic inference in our daily conversation, especially in the speech acts. Metonymy can be classified as prepositional metonymies (including referential metonymy and predicational metonymy) and illocutionary metonymy (speech act metonymy). The study of speech acts was originated by Austin, and elaborated by Searle and Levinson. But all their studies were restricted to pragmatics. Panther and Thornburg investigated speech acts from a cognitive-pragmatic perspective. It is claimed that one speech act consists of three scenarios:(1) the BEFORE: preconditions such as motivation, potentiality, ability, willingness, etc.(2) the CORE and the RESULT: the existing situation/real action, the immediate outcomeof a successful performance.(3) the AFTER: intended or unintended consequences of the action.Each component in the scenario can metonymically stand for other components, or for the whole scenario. For example, in the utterance "Can you pass the salt?", the BEFORE (the hearer's the ability to perform the action) of the act is used to stand for the whole speech act. Different parts of a speech act have different linking strengths when used to stand for the whole. The more peripheral a speech act component is located at the speech act scenario, the less likely that component will be in a 'stand-for' relation to the scenario, and vice versa. For example, in the utterance "Will you close the door? ", the future action -the AFTER- of the hearer to close the door stands for the request itself to close the door. It has stronger metonymic linking strength to the CORE than the utterance: "What is that smell?" (Motivation or reason for the hearer to perform the action stands for the action), which is located outside the boundaries of the request scenario. It has a weak metonymic relation with the request.In Chapter Five, metonymy is analyzed within the framework of relevance theory, which serves as a supplement to the previous chapters. Why is metonymy so pervasive in our thought and language? Why is metonymy used at all? Sperber and Wilson's relevance theory is applied to answer these questions. According to the principle of relevance, "every act of ostensive communication communicates a presumption of its own optimal relevance." A...