Functions Of Metonymy In News Text Organization

With cognitive linguistics gaining increasing attention in recent years, metonymy has been recognized as a fundamental cognitive and linguistic phenomenon which is pervasive both in spoken and written language. People have come to realize that metonymy is not just a process of substitution, as the majority of classical rhetorical works perceives it to be. As metonymic expressions are so widely used in daily communication, more and more efforts have been made to reveal the roles of metonymy as a conceptualizing capacity of human beings. In particular, much of the cognitive research on metonymy has been focused on the cognitive nature of metonymy, such as its definition and typology, its relationship with metaphor, and its roles in pragmatic inferencing. Besides, most of the existing studies on metonymy are restricted to lexical and syntactical levels. Researchers have come to realize the important functions of metonymy in affecting grammar, but little has been done to explore the functions of metonymy at the discourse level. In other words, textual functions of metonymy have been a much neglected area so far.The choice of news texts as the research data is motivated by the following two considerations. Firstly, news texts are well formed formal written texts. Exploring the functions of metonymy in news text organization can contributes to revealing the functions of metonymy in organizing written discourse in general. Secondly, news texts have a large audience. In modern times, news reporting has become an inseparable part in people’s life and an important way of acquiring information about the world around. Besides, lots of English learners use news texts as reading materials. Due to the important roles of news text, the present study takes news reports as its data to study the functions of metonymy in text organization. The data were collected from the major news websites of U.S. and U.K., including The New York Times (NYT), The Washington Post (WP), Cable News Network (CNN), The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), The Guardian, The Observer, British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and Reuters. The topics cover issues of emergencies, diplomatic relations, scientific, economic, environmental and political issues, news of entertainment and sports around the world.This study agrees with the assertion of cognitive linguists that language is metonymic in nature. Metonymy may cut across the three ontological worlds of form, concept and entities in the real world and may occur in all the three worlds. However, discourse is representation of the conceptualized world. When people are dealing with discourse, they do not deal with things in the real world. Based on this idea, the study proposes a "Form-Concept" model of metonymy, reducing the three ontological worlds to two, in which a linguistic FORM provides mental access to a CONCEPT. The research categorizes the various metonymic relations into Whole-Part metonymy and Cause-Effect metonymy based on the two guiding principles underlying metonymic mapping:contiguity and causality.The study has the following major findings. The Form-Concept model of metonymy provides a cognitive explanation for cohesive devices. Two linguistic signs may form a cohesive tie as long as they satisfy one of the following conditions:they have identical form, provide access to the same concept, or the concepts they provide access to are related by inclusion or contiguous with each other within the same ICM. Whole-Part metonymies and Cause-Effect metonymies generate two kinds of discourse patterns:the Whole-Part pattern and the Cause-Effect pattern. Both kinds of metonymies function at different levels of text organization:lexical, grammatical as well as textual level. Usually, these two patterns combine with each other in organizing news texts. The categories in news schemata are metonymically connected by Whole-Part and Cause-Effect relations. Headline presents the most prominent elements in an Event ICM, functioning as a vehicle to provide access to the whole Event ICM. Lead elaborates or complements the information presented by Headline. The concepts activated by Lead and Headline are connected by Whole-Part or Part-Part relations. Summary of a news text is connected to Main Events through Part-Whole relation, while Background and Consequences are connected to Main Events through Cause-Effect relation.This research attempts to offer a relatively comprehensive and integrated analytical framework for news text organization from the perspective of metonymy. It is significant not only to news text analysis but also to our understanding of the organization of written discourse in general. The research findings can also encourage discussion among linguists and scholars interested in revealing the mysteries of language. To sum up, exploring the functions of metonymy in news text organization is of great significance both theoretically and practically.