An Illocutionary Metonymic Study On "What’s X Doing Y"

The dissertation analyzes and inducts the characterization and connotation of the "What’s Xdoing Y" construction，focusing not on the features of it, but on the discussion of whether theconstruction is illocutionary metonymic and its operation mechanism. After the review of therelated study and research, the dissertation proposes an assumption that the construction of"What’s X doing Y" is illocutionary metonymic based on gestalt, Conceptual Blending Theory,Mental Model and the attribute enforcement-association model. For one thing, the assumptionexpands the application fields of the attribute enforcement-association model into the researchof constructions. For the other, it also revises the model and adds the context as a parameter intothe expression to adapt it to the interpretation of the "What’s X doing Y" construction.Therefore, the basic purposes of the dissertation consist of three parts: firstly, to establish theexpression "What’s X doing Y" as an illocutionary metonymic construction; secondly, to sumup the attributes of the illocutionary metonymic construction; thirdly, to put forward theoperational process and frame diagram under the revised attribute enforcement-associationmodel."What’s X doing Y" is a structure that seemingly asks for information but actuallyexpresses quite different context meaning which is unpredictable. Because of the independenceof the form and the unpredictability of the meaning,"What’s X doing Y" can be defined as anillocutionary metonymic construction. Illocutionary metonymy is a reasoning process using theillocutionary manner to interpret the indirect speech act, which focuses on the illocutionarycognitive explanation of certain indirect speech act. Because the illocutionary metonymy treatsthe whole discourse as indirect speech and the form of the discourse directs to unconventionalattributes, the theory is so adequate to explain the construction of "What’s X doing Y" that itcould reveal its cognitive mechanism.The dissertation consists of six parts. Part one is the introduction, in which the dissertationprovides questions and objectives of the research, as well as its necessity and feasibility. Theoretical framework and related literature are introduced in part two. This part analyzes thetheories of gestalt, Conceptual Blending Theory and Mental Model, and provides the theoreticalbases and supports. The related studies home and abroad about metonymies and "What’s Xdoing Y" construction are also reviewed in this part, which provides the historical and academicbackground for the research. Part three discusses the methods used in the dissertation and theprocess of collecting corpus. Part four is about the results of the research, and in this part, thedissertation proves the construction of "What’s X doing Y" is illocutionary metonymic and putsforward the operational process and frame diagram under the revised attributeenforcement-association model. Part five compares the attribute enforcement-association modelwith other models in analyzing "What’s X doing Y" construction, and discusses theconventionalization of the "What’s X doing Y" construction. Part six concludes the dissertationby summing up its significance, limitation and further research.