The Textual Function Of Conceptual Metonymy And Its Cognitive Conditions

Metonymy has been regarded as a figure of speech in traditional rhetoric study, and its main features consist in change of names as a result of related, neighboring or close relationships. Compared with metaphor, the study of metonymy attracts less attention and is considered as less interesting and abstract. In modern figurative theory, the nature and function of metonymy has been extensively explored, represented by Roman Jakobson's structural analysis and Stephen Ullmann's semantic study of its role in semantic change.Until the 1980s, with the development of cognitive linguistics, marked by George Lakoff & Mark Johnson's book Metaphors We Live By, views on metonymy have greatly changed. The conceptual nature and cognitive features of metonymy and conceptual associations related to a metonymic expression have been identified; metonymies are recognized as important models of thinking, and function as cognitive tools for people's conceptualization of abstract categories. Due to their conceptual nature and cognitive features, metonymies are rather precisely named"Conceptual Metonymies"in cognitive linguistic study.Though rich and fruitful, researches on conceptual metonymy are far from being complete. Disagreements are found in definition, cognitive features, and functions. Moreover, there seems to be fewer systematic researches on textual function of conceptual metonymy. Therefore, the present study will be an attempt to refine understandings of the conceptual nature of metonymy, and to explore the textual function of conceptual metonymy as well as its cognitive conditions.First and foremost, there are no generally agreed terms for defining conceptual metonymy. Despite the agreement on the conceptual nature of metonymy, cognitive linguists have their own understandings of the conceptual associations related to a metonymic expression and define them in their own terms. Furthermore, there is little agreement on conceptual metonymy's role in textual communication. Based on a survey of the earlier attempts to define conceptual metonymy, the present study, taking into account its three fundamental cognitive features, proposes a working definition of conceptual metonymy. This working definition is quite embracive and facilitates the exploration of the textual function of conceptual metonymy and its cognitive conditions. In order to explore its textual function, this paper identifies conceptual metonymy as a means of discourse rhetoric after clarifying the relationship between discourse rhetoric and text-linguistics. As a means of discourse rhetoric, conceptual metonymy fabricates logical consistency and coherence into textual communication, and enables verbal communication to be more efficient and coherent. In discussing the conceptual metonymy's textual function, namely its cohesive power at the surface level of discourse and its contribution to coherence at deep level, the present study, in line with Enkvist (1985), adopts an interaction-based cognitive model.Based on the discussion of its textual function, especially its contribution to coherence, this paper investigates the four major types of knowledge structures, namely, frames, scenarios, schemata and scripts. As cognitive conditions, these knowledge structures account for conceptual metonymy's textual function. Thereafter, all these cognitive conditions are included within a unified framework of Lakoff's theory of"Idealized Cognitive Models"(ICMs). The ICMs theory embraces the relations between the linguistic, real and conceptual world together, and locates the grounding of conceptual metonymy—conceptual contiguity at the conceptual world. Thus, such a framework is assumed to be more complete and persuasive in interpreting conceptual continuities and cognitive connectivity provided by metonymic models of thinking in textual communication.