Analysis On Directive Speech Act Metonymy Based On Conceptual Blending Theory

With the development of cognitive linguistics, Panther and Thornburg put forward the concept of Speech Act Metonymy and study metonymy for the first time from the cognitive perspective. Metonymy, based on diverse pragmatic functions, can be divided into three types:Referential Metonymy, Predicational Metonymy and Speech Act Metonymy, among which Speech Act Metonymy is a kind of high-level metonymy. Panther and Thornburg think that every speech act contains a well-structured scenario, which is composed of four phases:the BEFORE, the CORE, the RESULT and the ATFTER, and any phases of the scenario can be utilized by other phases to stand for the other phases and the whole speech act, which shows the essence of metonymy.This paper, based on Conceptual Blending Theory, has explained the dynamic formation of Directive Speech Act Metonymy in Thunderstorm with the help of four mental spaces, having classified the Directive Speech Act Metonymy into four types: Directive Speech Act of BEFORE-Activation, Directive Speech Act of CORE-Activation, Directive Speech Act of RESULT-Activation and Directive Speech Act of AFTER-Activation. Under the framework of Conceptual Blending Theory, the paper mainly discusses the ways to construct meanings of Directive Speech Act Metonymy, suggesting that there are two ways of meaning construction:firstly, the meaning of directive speech act metonymy can be realized through the activations of different phases to the whole directive speech act, that is to say, it can be realized through the BEFORE-Activation to the Whole Directive Speech Act, the CORE-Activation to the Whole Directive Speech Act, the RESULT-Activation to the Whole Directive Speech Act and The AFTER-Activation to the Whole Directive Speech Act; secondly, it can also be achieved through The Activation of other phases to the CORE, including the BEFORE-Activation to the CORE, the RESULT-Activation to the CORE and the AFTER-Activation to the CORE. This paper also makes a comparison of directive effects among the four types of directive speech act metonymy, only to find that Directive Speech Act Metonymies of CORE-Activation and RESULT-Activation have the strongest directive effect, followed by the Directive Speech Act Metonymy of BEFORE-Activation, and then the AFTER-Activation has the weakest directive effect.This study has certain significance in both theory and application. In theory, the research on the meaning construction of speech act metonymy has provided the pragmatic study of speech act metonymy with a feasible psychological way, verifying that the implicature expressed by indirect speech act in the dynamic mapping is in fact a result of conceptual metonymy. In application, this paper has made a detailed interpretation of directive speech act metonymy in Thunderstorm under the guide of conceptual blending theory, which will help people better understand speech acts in Thunderstorm, and enable people to have an essential comprehension of directive speech act theory, also, the space patterns set up by conceptual blending and metonymy can make it easier for people to solve some pragmatic problems, such as discourse coherence, pragmatic misunderstanding and implicature and so on.