Publications

Publication details [#10389]

Wang, Shao xiang. 2005. Review of: Panther, Klaus-Uwe; Thornburg, Linda L. 2003. Metonymy and Pragmatic Inferencing. Amsterdam; Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. ISBN: 9027253552, 285 p. Studies in Language 29 (3) : 722–728.

Abstract

The author reviews a book whose main purpose is to present the connections between current developments in the understanding of conceptual metonymy and its relationship with pragmatic inferencing. For the editors both cognitive linguistics and pragmatics possess many elements in common such as the study of language use, discourse, metaphor, metonymy, and others. The authors make an introduction to the book by showing how both disciplines relate. The book is made up of four sections. In the first section ("The place of metonymy in cognition and pragmatics") three papers deal with the importance of metonymy in interpreting inferential utterances and conceptual blending. The three papers in the second section ("Metonymic inferencing and grammatical structure") focus on how metonymy and grammar interact. The third section ("Metonymic inferencing and linguistic change") has two papers which take a historical perspective in the study of metonymy and implicature. Finally, the fourth section ("Metonymic inferencing across languages") consists of two papers which approach the differences in applying metonymic principles at a cross-linguistic level. The most relevant characteristic of this volume is that it regards cognitive pragmatics as a new discipline that is now growing. (Elena Ruiz Gil and Francisco Ruiz de Mendoza)