A Metonymic Study Of Discourse Coherence

One important concept in the field of discourse analysis is discourse coherence,the research of which is now mostly confined in the study of surface cohesive devices rather than an exploration of deep cohesive mechanisms.As one of the basic cognitive models,metonymy is generally thought to be established on contiguity and cause-effect principles,which inspires people to study the cohesive power of metonymy in discourse coherence.It is novel to make a combined study of metonymy and discourse coherence.According to the function of language,discourse can be classified into three types of genres: informative text,vocative text and expressive text.Former researches focus on only one kind of discourse and begin their study from the classification of metonymy.In this paper,three types of discourses are involved and the study is based on AL-Sharifi's theory of textual metonymic model.This study shows that under different cognitive working mechanisms,metonymy all plays an essential role in achieving deep coherence in three different types of discourses.But the main function of metonymy in three types of texts has prominent difference.For example,metonymies in informative texts are mainly performing referential and ideational functions.Metonymies in vocative texts are mainly used to maintain and establish personal relationship.Metonymies in expressive texts are mainly performing an implied function.This is related to the function of the texts to a large degree.In addition,the author also finds the frequency of metonymy in different texts of the same type of genre has much difference.For instance,metonymies in technological instructions are much fewer than that in texts of popular science paper.This has to do with the degree of texts' formality.This is a cognitive study of discourse coherence.Given the small sample corpus of this study,its findings should be considered initial and tentative and should be testified with further research.However,it is sincerely hoped that this paper will shedsome light on the importance of metonymy in achieving discourse coherence.Last but not least,foreign language teachers are expected to help students develop a metonymic awareness and learn to appreciate discourses from a metonymic perspective.