Aspects of Meaning Construction
Editors
Meaning does not reside in linguistic units but is constructed in the minds of the language users. Meaning construction is an on-line mental activity whereby speech participants create meanings on the basis of underspecified linguistic units. The construction of meaning is guided by cognitive principles. The contributions collected in the volume focus on two types of cognitive principles guiding meaning construction: meaning construction by means of metonymy and metaphor, and meaning construction by means of mental spaces and conceptual blending. The papers in the former group survey experiential evidence of figurative meaning construction and discuss high-level metaphor and metonymy, the role of metonymy in discourse, the chaining of metonymies, metonymy as an alternative to coercion, and metaphtonymic meanings of proper names. The papers in the latter group address the issues of meaning construction prompted by personal pronouns, relative clauses, inferential constructions, “sort-of” expressions, questions, and the into-causative construction.
[Not in series, 136] 2007. x, 289 pp.
Publishing status: Available
© John Benjamins Publishing Company
Table of Contents
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List of contributors | pp. ix–x
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Introduction. The construction of meaning in languageGünter Radden, Klaus-Michael Köpcke, Thomas Berg and Peter Siemund | pp. 1–15
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Part I: Metonymy and metaphor
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Experiential tests of figurative meaning constructionRaymond W. Gibbs | pp. 19–32
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High-level metaphor and metonymy in meaning constructionFrancisco José Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez and Ricardo Mairal-Usón | pp. 33–49
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The role of metonymy in meaning construction at discourse level: A case studyAntonio Barcelona | pp. 51–75
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Chained metonymies in lexicon and grammar: A cross-linguistic perspective on body-part termsMartin Hilpert | pp. 77–98
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Arguing the case against coercionDebra Ziegeler | pp. 99–123
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When Zidane is not simply Zidane, and Bill Gates is not just Bill Gates: Some thoughts on the construction of metaphtonymic meanings of proper namesMario Brdar and Rita Brdar-Szabó | pp. 125–142
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Collocational overlap can guide metaphor interpretationAnatol Stefanowitsch | pp. 143–167
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Part II: Mental spaces and conceptual blending
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Constructing the meanings of personal pronounsRonald W. Langacker | pp. 171–187
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The construction of meaning in relative clauses: Indeterminacy and constraintsKiki Nikiforidou | pp. 189–205
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Constraints on inferential constructionsChristian Koops | pp. 207–224
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The construction of vagueness: “Sort-of“ expressions in Romance languagesWiltrud Mihatsch | pp. 225–245
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Communication or memory mismatch? Towards a cognitive typology of questionsWolfgang Schulze | pp. 247–264
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Brutal Brits and persuasive Americans: Variety-specifc meaning construction in the into-causativeStefanie Wulff, Anatol Stefanowitsch and Stefan Th. Gries | pp. 265–281
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Index of authors | pp. 283–284
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Index of subjects | pp. 285–287
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Index of metonymies and metaphors | p. 289
“A useful body of research on metaphor, metonymy and blends, which is valuable in bringing readers up-to-date on recent developments...the contribution of this book may no lie so much in the aspects studied (although these certainly add to our knowledge of the production and reception of meaning), but rather this volume distinguishes itself in that many of the articles presented here provide a clear pathway to more reliable measurement of cognitive processes.”
JoAnne Neff-van Aertselaer, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, in Cognitive Linguistics 21(1): 166-179
“This is indeed an extremely coherent volume that makes an engaging, highly stimulating reading experience [...] The result is a highly rigorous, well-balanced volume which makes a groundbreaking contribution to the complex issue of meaning construction. The authors of the volume’s chapters admirably succeed in shedding light on a considerable number of different though complementary facets which are essential to fully understand the dynamics of meaning construction.”
Francisco Gonzálvez García, in Journal of Pragmatics 2009
“As a whole, the volume offers the readers impressive insights into the investigation of meaning construction, examines and contrasts a range of current approaches, and highlights many unresolved problems in the theoretical understanding of the nature of meaning. [...] In essence, the volume will be highly informative and thought-provoking for those researchers and scholars who are interested in the ever-green topic of meaning construction.”
Annalisa Baicchi, University of Pavia, in the Annual Review of Cognitive Linguistics, Vol. 5 (2007)
“In summary, Radden, Köpcke, Berg and Siemund have edited a useful body of research on metaphor, metonymy and blends, which is valuable in bringing readers up-to-date on recent developments.”
JoAnne Neff-van Aertselaer, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain, in Cognitive Linguistics, Vol. 21:1 (2010)
Cited by
Cited by 7 other publications
Baicchi, Annalisa
2017. Chapter 3. How to do things with metonymy in discourse. In Studies in Figurative Thought and Language [Human Cognitive Processing, 56], ► pp. 76 ff. 
Benczes, Réka
Currier, Elizabeth
2022. Decontextualized Instruction or Disembodied Reading?. Vetus Testamentum ► pp. 1 ff.
Jodłowiec, Maria & Agnieszka Piskorska
2015. Metonymy revisited: Towards a new relevance-theoretic account. Intercultural Pragmatics 12:2
Ma, Chenting & Yi-na Wang
2019. Francisco José Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez & Alicia Galera Masegosa,Cognitive modeling: A linguistic perspective. Amsterdam & Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins, 2014. Pp. x + 250.. Journal of Linguistics 55:2 ► pp. 462 ff.
Rebollar, Bárbara Eizaga
2015. A Relevance-theoretic Perspective on Metonymy. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 173 ► pp. 191 ff.
Zaini, Amin
2022. Co-text and critical reading for international postgraduates in Australia. Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 40:3 ► pp. 353 ff.
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Subjects
Main BIC Subject
CF: Linguistics
Main BISAC Subject
LAN009000: LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General