Metonymy in Language and Thought gives a state-of-the-art account of metonymic research. The contributions have different disciplinary and theoretical backgrounds in linguistics, psycholinguistics, psychology and literary studies. However, they share the assumption that metonymy is a cognitive phenomenon, a “figure of thought,” underlying much of our ordinary conceptualization that may be even more fundamental than metaphor. The use of metonymy in language is a reflection of this conceptual status. The framework within which metonymy is understood in this volume is that of scenes, frames, scenarios, domains or idealized cognitive models. The chapters are revised papers given at the Metonymy Workshop held in Hamburg, 1996.

The book presents a survey of the studies of metonymy in various aspects of language from the cognitive linguistic perspective. It discusses the role of metonymy not only in the traditional domain of semantics but also in morphology, linguistic pragmatics and formal dimensions of language, including syntax. The most influential modern theories of metonymy are thoroughly and critically discussed and the author also proposes his own original solutions to the problems which arise, taking into account his Polish perspective. Since the picture that emerges shows metonymy as a universal conceptual phenomenon, the last chapter is devoted to the discussion of the possible biological, neural and evolutionary reasons why metonymy is so rampant. Thus, another important aim of this study is to consider the problem of the embodiment of metonymy from the point of view of modern neuroscience.

This book explores metonymy in language, gesture, music, art and film, and discusses the challenges it presents in cross-cultural communication.

Figurative language has been regarded traditionally as situated outside the realm of grammar. However, with the advent of Cognitive Linguistics, metonymy and metaphor are now recognized as being not only ornamental rhetorical tropes but fundamental figures of thought that shape, to a considerable extent, the conceptual structure of languages. The present volume goes even beyond this insight to propose that grammar itself is metonymical in nature (Langacker) and that conceptual metonymy and metaphor leave their imprints on lexicogrammatical structure. This thesis is developed and substantiated for a wide array of languages and lexicogrammatical phenomena, such as word class meaning and word formation, case and aspect, proper names and noun phrases, predicate and clause constructions, and other metonymically and metaphorically motivated grammatical meanings and forms. The volume should be of interest to scholars and students in cognitive and functional linguistics, in particular, conceptual metonymy and metaphor theory, cognitive typology, and pragmatics.

This book describes methods, risks, and challenges involved in the construction of metaphor and metonymy digital repositories. The first part of this volume showcases established and new projects around the world in which metaphors and metonymies are harvested and classified. The second part provides a series of cognitive linguistic studies focused on highlighting and discussing theoretical and methodological risks and challenges involved in building these digital resources. The volume is a result of an interdisciplinary collaboration between cognitive linguists, psychologists, and computational scientists supporting an overarching idea that metaphor and metonymy play a central role in human cognition, and that they are deeply entrenched in recurring patterns of bodily experience. Throughout the volume, a variety of methods are proposed to collect and analyze both conceptual metaphors and metonymies and their linguistic and visual expressions.

This book deals with the interplay between word-formation and metonymy. It shows that, like metaphor, metonymy interacts in important ways with morphological structure, but also warns us against a virtually unconstrained conception of metonymy. The central claim here is that word-formation and metonymy are distinct linguistic components that complement and mutually constrain each other. Using linguistic data from a variety of languages, the book provides ample empirical support for its thesis. It is much more than a systematic study of two neglected linguistic phenomena, for a long time thought to be unimportant by linguists. Through exposing and explaining the intricate interaction between metonymy and word formation from a cognitive linguistic perspective, the reader is presented with a sense of the amazing complexity of the development of linguistic systems. This book will be essential reading for scholars and advanced students interested in the role of figuration in grammar.

The general aim of this book is to contribute to a better understanding of metonymy, using the theoretical framework of cognitive linguistics. The book argues for a conceptual rather than purely linguistic basis for metonymy and explores distinctions between metonymy and other figurative language.