engleski

Metonymic blending and the construction of meaning

The role of conceptual metonymy in meaning construction has been insightfully discussed by Panther & Thornburg (2004). They see metonymies as natural inferential schemata or “ pathways” that guide our reasoning in the interpretation of a metonymic utterance. Thus, the conceptual metonymy RESULT FOR ACTION resolves the conceptual conflict in the advertisement Win a honeymoon!, where the imperative construction coerces an action interpretation on the achievement verb win. The action that the potential winner is meant to perform is, however, not just any action but a specific, goal-directed action, i.e. an accomplishment. This meaning emerges from the structurally coerced meaning of ‘ action’ and the meaning of ‘ telicity’ inherent in the achievement verb win. In the directive Win a honeymoon, both components of meaning are conceptually blended. Their conceptual integration has also consequences for their interpretation. Accomplishments are events that lead to a conclusive end-point. However, subscribing to a magazine or buying something do usually not have winning something as their conclusive end-point. The action to be taken in order to win a honeymoon is thus also in conflict with our background knowledge, and the enticing offer made in the advertisement has therefore doubtful credibility. The paper argues that metonymy, like metaphor, is essentially a phenomenon of conceptual compression or blending (for blending in metaphor see Grady, Oakley & Coulson 1999, for blending in metonymy see Coulson & Oakley 2003, 2005). This view is in line with the observation made by many cognitive semanticists that metonymy is not a matter of substitution: the metonymic source is not erased but contributes to the emergent construction of meaning. It evokes a domain within a given context which typically serves as the background to the metonymic target. For example, the first violin in the context The first violin is shaking hands with the conductor evokes the domain of a classical orchestra and its representation by the first violinist. In the context The second violin plays a separate piece of music to the first violin in a quartet, the first violin evokes the individual role assigned to each instrument in a score. In the former context the metonymic target ‘ violinist’ tends to be seen as more prominent than the source (and therefore determines human coreference), in the latter context the metonymic source ‘ violin’ tends to be judged as more prominent than the target (and accordingly takes non-human coreference). Metonymy is not a matter of all or none, but of more or less along a continuum between the poles of source and target prominence. The metonymic source is most prominent in active zone phenomena as in The trumpet could be heard, where the target, the trumpet’ s active zone sound, is almost fully predictable and hence beyond people’ s awareness. The metonymic target is most prominent in metonymies that patently violate linguistic or conceptual restrictions, as in The trumpet is on sick leave. It is here that conceptual compression is most likely to lead to meaning construction.

metonymy; conceptual blending; metonymic target; metonymic source

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