A Study On The Coherent Function Of Speech Act Metonymy In American Short Story Conversation Discourse

In recent years, coherence has been studied by many scholars. Thus the thesis can explore it for"the author is standing on the shoulders of giant". As the cognitive linguistics developing, metonymy has become the central researching point among the cognitive linguists, who have reached the common understanding that metonymy is a way of people's thinking. It is not only a kind of rhetorical device, but also an essential part of people's conceptual system. Therefore, people often employ one familiar thing to stand for the unfamiliar thing, or they usually employ a part of a thing to represent the whole or other parts of it.Thornburg and Panther (1997) propose the notion of speech act metonymy on the basis of action scenario and speech act theory. Speech act metonymy is a product of the combination of cognitive linguistics and pragmatics, and it is employed to explain the speech acts in conversation discourse. Speech act metonymy is a new and worthy issue to be studied, because it plays an important part in the process of meaning generation and interpretation in conversation discourse. It postulates that the speaker can use a stage to stand for other stage or the whole scenario, and the whole process is completed within a very short time without any obvious effort. Since metonymy is a way of people's thinking, as a type of metonymy, it is sure that speech act metonymy can contribute to coherence in the level of conversation discourse and it can support the meaning generation and interpretation in conversation discourse.The thesis is based on Thornburg and Panther's speech act metonymy theory and Li Yongzhong's pragmatic parameters to form its theoretical framework. By analyzing several fragments of conversation discourse which comes from the famous American short story Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and The Old Man and the Sea, the author explores the coherent function of three types of speech act metonymy, they are directive speech act metonymy, commissive speech act metonymy, and expressive speech act metonymy in the American short story conversation discourse.