The Contrastive Study Of Metonymy In English And Chinese From The Cognitive Perspective-a Case Of Chinese And English Political News Headlines

For a long time, metonymy, like metaphor, is also regarded as a kind ofwidely used figure of speech.Traditional rhetoric think that metonymy is a kind ofrelationship between the two things can be substituted in two related things.Since the1980s, Lakoff and Johnson (1980), as representatives of the cognitive linguists,thinkthat metonymy is not just limited to this traditional understanding, and they putforward a new cognitive view that metonymy is not only a rhetoric method, but also itis a common way of thinking and action in people ’daily life.In the past few decades,compared with the research on metaphor, linguists did not pay enough concern tometonymy.This article, focused on metonymy phenomenon in political newsheadlines in Chinese and English as the research objects from the perspective ofcognitive linguistics.,tries to make a comparison and study of English and Chineselanguages.Through the definition of metonymy， cognitive mechanism andclassification and the differences and relations between metaphor and metonymy,combined with the specific usage of metonymy in English and Chinese newsheadlines, we further realize the view that metonymy is a basic human cognitive wayof thinking.Metonymy is a cognitive process of thinking, in essence, it isconceptual.Just metaphor, metonymy is not only the basic tool of thinking and action,but it also play an important role in human‘s daily life and communication. Speakof the theory of cognitive metonymy, linguists have given different ideas, but most ofthem are similar.This article is mainly based on Lakoff (1987)‘s theory, the idealizedcognitive models and Radden and Kovecses (1999)‘s classification of metaphor.Afterthe comparative study on metonymy in the English and Chinese news headlines, thispaper tries to find the similarities and differences of two languages metonymy model,and then discusses and analyzes the similarities and differences,finally gives ancognitive explanation.Metonymy mapping is not arbitrary, it is a basic human body experience and knowledge as the foundation, and restricted by the national culturalhabits.On the one hand, because of human have similar body experience and the sameencyclopedia knowledge. There are similar metonymy models in English and Chinesenews headlines.On the other hand, due to their different living environments andexperiences, historical traditions, cultural beliefs and values, metonymy models showsome differences between English and Chinese headlines.We hope that, throughcomparative analysis of metonymy in Chinese and English, can deepen the cognitivestudy, at the same time,can also promote better understanding of the two languagesand better communicating with each other.