A Cognitive Semiotic Approach To Textual Metonymy

Metonymy, like metaphor, is traditionally regarded as a figure of speech defined in the field of rhetoric since Aristotle. It is viewed as a process of substituting one linguistic expression for an associated one, or a relation in which one linguistic expression "stands for" another. Over the last two decades, the modern cognitive linguists have made a lot of researches on metaphor and considered metaphor as a cognitive tool. But compared with metaphor, metonymy has received much less attention. In recent years, the intensive studies have been made on nature and applications of metonymy with the development of cognitive linguistics.Giving a brief survey on traditional and cognitive views of metonymy, this thesis claims there are some limitations in both of the view points, but the cognitive views broaden our understanding of metonymy in terms of recognizing its cognitive nature and refining its properties. Metonymy, no less significant than metaphor, is pervasive in our language, concepts and material world. What underlies this phenomenon is that people always employ metonymy to generate and interpret what they think and act. On the basis of the research made by Al-Sharafi, and Padden and Kovecses, a cognitive semiotic model of textual metonymy is established. In this cognitive semiotic model of textual metonymy, there are nine metonymic relations accounting for cohesion and coherence of text.The thesis consists of six chapters, which are organized as follows:Chapter One is "Introduction", which provides some preliminaries for the thesis. This part deals with three issues: (a) introduction of the theoretical basis of the thesis; (b) the purposes of studying textual metonymy from a cognitive semiotic perspective; and (c) a tentative outline of the thesis.Chapter Two is mainly concerned with some earlier studies on metonymy from traditional and cognitive perspective. In traditional view metonymy is merely regarded as a way to embellish our language and used at lexical level, while in cognitive view metonymy is treated as intrinsic model of thinking deriving the experience of the world. Both of views share some similarity, but also suffer from limitations. Since metaphor and metonymy are closed related, this part also makes comparison between them.Chapter Three introduces general theoretical issues of textual metonymy. It argues that metonymy is cognitive and semiotic in nature. A semiotic approach to metonymy leads to metonymy as a process cutting across the realms of language, mind and world. The nature and features of metonymy entail the feasibility of a metonymic account for text cohesion and coherence. Based on the research of Padden and Kovecses and Al-Sharafi, a cognitive semiotic model of textual metonymy is constructed.Chapter Four and Chapter Five constitute the main part of this study. In Chapter Four, the relationship between metonymy and text cohesion are presented in detail. Examples of how metonymy actually contributes to the cohesion of text will be provided within Halliday and Hasan's framework of cohesion, but cohesion is no longer discussed as a surface text ties, but from a metonymic perspective. In Chapter Five, metonymic relations which operate in the schema theory will be used to facilitate the reasoning of text coherence.Chapter Six concludes the thesis by summarizing the major findings of the study for this thesis. The author concludes that metonymy is not a substitution between words, nor a substitution between concepts. It is a stand-for process in which one word or concept or object stands for anther by contiguity or causality. The cognitive-semiotic nature and features of metonymy guarantees its application to account for the cohesion and coherence of text. The cognitive function of metonymy and its textual potential further demonstrate that metonymy is a mode of thinking and acting. At last, the limitations of the present study and the prospects for future research are also discussed.