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Part of
Studies in Figurative Thought and Language
Edited by Angeliki Athanasiadou
[Human Cognitive Processing 56] 2017
► pp. 253–271

Chapter 10
Metaphor and metonymy as fanciful “asymmetry” builders

 | Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Langacker (1987: 469) remarks that “the asymmetry of an ‘event’ detected against an established background is fundamental to cognitive organization and not at all peculiar to language. It recalls not only figure/ground alignment […] but also the more general point that novel experience is structured and interpreted with reference to previous experience”. In this paper I argue that metaphor and metonymy are in a sense, if not par excellence, fanciful “asymmetry”-builders: their pertinent characteristic, i.e. association in terms of similarity and contiguity, always warrants that “novel experiences” (targets) are safely structured and interpreted with reference to “previous experiences” (sources); in other words, it always ensures that the imaginative, playful departure from an "established background" will not lead us astray.
Keywords: association, contiguity, exaggeration, imaginative departure, similarity
Article outline
  • 1.Exaggerated stimuli
  • 2.The interaction between metaphor and metonymy
    • 2.1The perspective polarisation of prehistoric handprints
    • 2.2Metaphor-metonymy as a playful ‘seeing as’
  • 3.Back to the ‘peak shift effect’
  • 4.Epilogue
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 26 April 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.56.10vel
References (27)
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