Cognitive Approaches To Metonymy

Metonymy is traditionally viewed as a figure of speech that involves a process of substituting one linguistic expression for another. The definitions to metonymy, the classification of metonymy, and the comparison between metonymy and synecdoche are main aspects of metonymy in a rhetorical treatment. With the development of cognitive linguistics, it is generally believed that metonymy is a cognitive process much more than a linguistic device.This paper firstly offers a traditional view on metonymy, and points out the defects of the rhetorical, structuralist and pragmatic approach to metonymy.The rhetorical approach regards metonymy as a mere rhetorical device. The structuralist approach only lays stress on the referential function of metonymy, though some structuralist linguists has paid attention to the relationship between metonymy and metaphor. Traditional pragmatic approaches realize pragmatic functions of metonymy and prove the vital role of metonymy plays in pragmatic inferencing. Nevertheless, it has no good explanation to the speed and effortlessness of metonymic inferencing, and the cognitive nature as well. The Gricean approach and Searle's speech act theory will be given details to.For the purpose of tackling these problems, the present paper studies metonymy from the cognitive perspective. It believes that metonymy is a cognitive process in which one conceptual entity, the vehicle, provides mental access to another conceptual entity, the target, within the same idealized cognitive model. Based on this definition, a more scientific classification of metonymy and a profound comparison between metonymy and metaphor is presented.In the interpretation of metonymy, cognitive approaches bridge the gaps in traditional approaches. This paper presents three cognitive approaches to metonymy. Panther & Thornburg improved Searle's speech act theory by proposing the speech act metonymy theory and the scenario approach. Sperber & Wilson's Relevance Theory is accepted by...