转喻的认知视角研究

Metonymy: from the Perspective of Cognition

【Abstract】: In this paper, three different assumptions based on the cognitive view of metonymy are discussed in d etail. Different kinds of ICMs are involved in the generation of metonymies,thus we believe that metonymy operates within the sameICM. We believe that metonymy is not restricted to language but is a cognitive process which operates within the same id ealized cognitive mod el.

【Keywords】: metonymy; cognitive view; id ealized cognitive mod el(ICM);

classification.

1.Introduction

Metonymy istraditionally regard ed as a figureof speechthatinvolvesaprocessofsubstitutingonelinguistic expressionforanother.Itwasbasicallythoughtofasamatteroflanguage,especiallyliter aryorfigurativelanguage.Thisviewofmetonymy is refl ectedin standard d efinitions, which tend to d escribe metonymy as “a figure of speech thatconsists in using the name ofone thingfor thatofsomethingelse with which it is associated”. The best-known cases of metonymy in this traditional sense are expressions that are used for the propose of indirect referring. For exampl e, “the White House” ca n be used to refer the executive branch of the American government, a spokesman of the American government or the American presid ent himself, But it is notsynonymouswithanyofthese.

The ol d substitution view of metonymy continues to shine through the cognitiveanalysisofmetaphorwhen certainpattersofmetonymy,suchas CONTAINER FOR CONTENTS are evoked. This explicit or implicit ad option of the

view that metonymy is just a substitution of one word for another had as a result that researchers mainly l ooked at one一to一one relations between.

In recent years, with the advent of cognitive linguistics, it has been recognized that the traditional view of metonymy is too narrow and that metonymy, like metaphor, has to be recognized as a fundamental cognitive and linguistic phenomenon alongsid e metaphor. Metonymy is a conceptual tool that operates within “id ealized cognitive mod els” or “d omain matrices”. In this view, metonymy is d efined as(Radd en&Kovecses,1999):

A cognitive process in which one conceptual entity, the vehicl e, provid es mental access to another conceptual entity, the target, within the same id ealized cognitive mod el.

The cognitive linguistics makes three assumptions about metonymy that is very Different from traditional view:

(I).Metonymy is a conceptual phenomenon:

(II).Metonymyisa cognitiveprocess:

(III)Metonymy operates within the same id ealized cognitive mod el.

2.Metonymyis a conceptual phenomenon