The Illocutionary Metonymic Analysis Of Construction "A Is B."

By virtue of the deficiency in the vague differences between metaphor andmetonymy in ICM framework, and by virtue of the deficiency of the originalillocutionary metonymy attribute model presented by Panther, the aim of this paper isto conduct a meticulous and in-depth investigation of illocutionary metonymy “A isB”construction. It argues that “A is B" ought to be categorized as illocutionarymetonymy instead of mere metaphor, which is carried out to reveal its underlyingmechanism and patterns of the dynamic reasoning process. AttributeEnforcement-association Model is a highly-specific and constrained attributeinferential model based on the amended version of the original IM and blendingtheory. In accordance with relevant construction theories, this paper specifies thecomprehensive aspects concerning “A is B ", contributing to the deeper insight of “Ais B” illocutionary metonymy construction, by the standard of which this paperexpounds and proves the rationality and efficiency of the model proposed.This articleconsist of five main parts. The first part puts forward the research background,research motivation and research problems. Part Two summarizes both thetheoretical framework and the literature review. The theoretical support is the basisfor our research assumption. What’s more, the contribution and the defection ofprevious theories are more than useful for the paper writing. Part three is mainlyabout methodology, generally and subtly providing the research method. In the fourthpart, the research problem and assumption are clearly proposed. This paper paysgreat attention on the concepts ignored by constructive and metaphorical researchesin the past. Under the guidance of metonymic-motivated thought, the fourth part ofthe paper attempts to establish the assumption of “A is B” being a valid constructionwith metonymic-motivated thought, and provides the fundamental motivation of theestablishment of “A is B” construction. The final part aims to present the key pointsand difficulties which this paper is about to meet during the research process. Itargues that the speech act of “A is B” structure is fully qualified as a construction.For the “A is B” structure confirms with two necessary and sufficient conditions of constructure, which are not only the unique form of specific structure, as well asunpredictable on the aspects of form, semantics and function, respectively."A is B"is usually treated as a metaphoric construction, but it gets a different perspective inreal cases, because of the unobvious similarity between target domain and sourcedomain. This far-fetched formation of metaphor gives me the inspiration for mythesis.A comprehensive analysis is quite necessary for conducting a satisfiedconclusion, which is also the basis of theoretical breakthroughs apart from theguidance of metonymy-motivated thought. Moreover, this thesis redefines thecontent and attributes of target domain and source domain. Illocutionary metonymymainly focuses on studying the reasoning process of indirect speech act. The sourcedomain is located by the form of whole utterance, while the target domain reflectsthe macro-attribute of utterance which gets its meaning from micro-processing.Thus,the purpose of this study is to prove the existence of a metonymic thinking method,in which the constructional nature underlies by revealing the generation andoperation of the “A is B” Chinese construction from a new angle.