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Relevance Theory, Figuration, and Continuity in Pragmatics
Edited by Agnieszka Piskorska
[Figurative Thought and Language 8] 2020
► pp. 45–65

Chapter 2
Metonymic relations – from determinacy to indeterminacy

| Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland
| University of Warsaw, Poland

The chapter offers an account of metonymy and discusses some stylistic effects which may be provided by metonymic expressions. We treat metonymically communicated concepts as part of the inferentially established proposition of an utterance and argue that many such concepts may be indeterminate. We posit that the reference of metonymic expressions is assigned through the operation of a pragmatic mechanism called contextual cognitive fix, which can be seen as an alternative to free enrichment. In line with other relevance-theoretic works, we see indeterminacy as an asset rather than deficit of communication, showing that it can be a source of stylistic effects also in the case of metonymy.

Keywords: comprehension heuristic, free enrichment, inferential processes, metonymy, mutual parallel adjustment, non-lexicalized concepts, non-paraphrasability, semantic indeterminacy, shallow processing, vagueness
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Cognitive linguistics on metonymy
  • 3.A relevance-theoretic treatment of metonymy involving contextual cognitive fix
  • 4.Metonymy and cognitive effects
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 20 May 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ftl.8.02jod
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