Metaphor and Metonymy in Cognitive Language

ISSN 1799-2591

Theory and Practice in Language Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 68-73, January 2011

© 2011 ACADEMY PUBLISHER Manufactured in Finland.

doi:10.4304/tpls.1.1.68-73

Metaphor and Metonymy—A Tentative Research

into Modern Cognitive Linguistics

Shenli Song

College of Foreign Languages/ Office of Foreign Language College, Zhejiang Gongshang University, Hangzhou, China

Email: windyforever@gmail.com

Abstract—Metonymy, as often treated as a subtype of metaphor by cognitive linguistics, has a different

working mechanism; metaphor is based on perceived similarity between things while metonymy on the

relationship within things themselves. Cognition and the use of language involve the access and manipulation

of mental spaces, which are constructed from human perceptual experience and are extended through

imaginative processes, within which metaphor and metonymy are the most signific ant ones. From the

perspectives of construction, poetic and cognitive function and working mechanism, this paper makes a

comprehensive analysis of metaphor and metonymy through comparing and contrasting these two important

language phenomena, exploring their similarities and contiguities.

Index Terms—construction, poetic function, cognitive function, similarity, contiguity

I. INTRODUCTION

Metaphor and metonymy are treated as two different figures of speech in traditional rhetoric. The fa mous linguist

Jakobson mentioned them in his works in 1960s as two important principles for language. Cognitive linguistics focuses

on the ubiquity of metaphor and metonymy in language but in modern theories of metaphor, metonymy is often

regarded as a subtype of metaphor and gets a bare mention. Based on the illuminating framework offered by Cognitive

Exploration of language and Linguistics, this paper attempts to analyze these two language phenomena in terms of their

constructions, functions and working mechanisms in the light of semiotics, pointing out that both of them are...