engleski

Metonymic chains and the inferential role of metonymy

The lecture will be devoted to a partial discussion of the results of an ongoing series of case studies on the functioning of metonymy in authentic texts. Metonymy has been known for some time to be ubiquitous in language and thought. One of findings of these case studies that will be briefly discussed in the lecture is the realization that two, often more, metonymies regularly occur at the same or different analytical levels in the same utterance, often in the same sentence. Metonymies are particularly relevant at the level of discourse-pragmatic inferencing. The results of the case studies that will be discussed at greater length are the frequent chaining of metonymies and the primacy of the inferential role of metonymy. Metonymies chain to each other and to metaphor in the same utterance. Some of these metonymies seem to "pave the way" for the operation of other metonymies which are chained to them. An attempt will be made to show some of the most frequent patterns of metonymic chaining. On the other hand, my results suggest three main functions of metonymy in language: inferential, motivational, and referential, and that the last two functions are a consequence of the inferential function.

metonymy; inferencing; metonymic chaining

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