The Coherent Function Of The Speech Act Metonymy In Drama Discourse

Metonymy as a well-known rhetorical device has been studied for centuries from different perspectives. While the traditional rhetoricians think of metonymy as the relationship of substitution, cognitive linguists regard metonymy as a way of thinking, which is grounded in experience, and is subject to cognitive principles and which structures our thoughts and actions.Thornburg and Panther (1997) deal with metonymy from a new perspective and propose the concept of the speech act metonymy, which is a new claim in the field of cognitive linguistics. They believe that metonymy is instrumental in indirectly accomplishing linguistic actions such as promises, offers, requests and so on. A speaker can perform a speech act by mentioning an attribute of that speech act, just as a speaker can refer to a person by mentioning an attribute of that person.Within the field of cognitive linguistics, the previous studies mainly focus on the study of the speech act metonymy at theoretical level, not its application at the discoursal level. This study makes an analysis on the speech act metonymy in drama discourse.This study makes researches on the coherent function of the speech act metonymy with three drama samples. Through discussion, we can draw the conclusion that the use of the speech act metonymy in drama discourse can make discourse form a unified network. It is the unified network that ensures drama discourse coherent in structure and content and makes the conversation move smoothly.Generally, this study is based on the cognitive linguistics view of the speech act metonymy. More exactly, this study aims to explore the coherent function of the speech act metonymy in drama discourse and its important role in the generation and interpretation of discourse from a cognitive linguistics perspective. This study is based on the theory of Panther and Thornburg's action scenario and the theory of Collins and Loftus's spreading activation model.