Metonymy : semantic, pragmatic, cognitive and stylistic perspectives
The present research is concerned to define metonymy and discuss its functions in discourse. The theoretical background to the research is pluralist, including semantic, pragmatic, cognitive and stylistic approaches. Different theories are shown to account for conventional and creative realisations of metonymy in everyday discourse, as well as its functions in literary texts. Metonymy is traditionally described in rhetoric and poetics as a figure of speech but the scope of the term has been extended. It is used to describe a means of structuring narrative discourse (Jakobson 1956), and a generalised cognitive mechanism (Lakoff 1987). Recent claims that metonymy is itself a universally valid explanatory principle, based on the evidence of psycholinguistic experiments (Gibbs 1994), lead to consideration of how metonymy affects semantic and syntactic features of language. The thesis considers typological descriptions and explanations of metonymy in terms of general semantic relationships such as part for whole and cause for effect. Metonymy, traditionally a property of noun phrases, is shown to be present in different word categories and at different levels of discourse. Contiguity, a general principle on which
Pankhurst, Anne Fisher
Metonymy : semantic, pragmatic, cognitive and stylistic perspectives. The present research is concerned to define metonymy and discuss its functions in discourse. The theoretical background to the research is pluralist, including semantic, pragmatic, cognitive and stylistic approaches. Different theories are shown to account for conventional and creative realisations of metonymy in everyday discourse, as well as its functions in literary texts. Metonymy is traditionally described in rhetoric and poetics as a figure of speech but the scope of the term has been extended. It is used to describe a means of structuring narrative discourse (Jakobson 1956), and a generalised cognitive mechanism (Lakoff 1987). Recent claims that metonymy is itself a universally valid explanatory principle, based on the evidence of psycholinguistic experiments (Gibbs 1994), lead to consideration of how metonymy affects semantic and syntactic features of language. The thesis considers typological descriptions and explanations of metonymy in terms of general semantic relationships such as part for whole and cause for effect. Metonymy, traditionally a property of noun phrases, is shown to be present in different word categories and at different levels of discourse. Contiguity, a general principle on which
metonymy semantic_pragmatic cognitive stylistic perspective present concerned define metonymy discus function discourse theoretical_background pluralist include semantic_pragmatic cognitive stylistic approach different_theory show account conventional creative realisation metonymy everyday discourse well function literary_text metonymy traditionally describe rhetoric poetics figure_speech scope term extend use_describe mean structure narrative_discourse jakobson generalise cognitive_mechanism lakoff recent claim metonymy universally valid explanatory principle base evidence psycholinguistic lead consideration metonymy affect semantic_syntactic feature_language considers typological description explanation metonymy term general semantic relationship part_whole cause_effect metonymy traditionally property noun_phrase show present different word category different_level discourse general principle