The general aim of this paper is to show how cross-linguistic (contrastive) data can expand the perspective in cognitive linguistic research on metonymy, which may raise a host of questions calling for a revision of some widely accepted views. A more specific, methodological aim is to show how the introspection-driven research and the authentic-data driven research in cognitive linguistics can feed into each other in a cyclical way (cf. Kertész and Rákosi 2008b). Using two case studies, the paper emphasizes the role of contrastive research in the interaction between the introspection-driven and the authentic-data driven research in cognitive linguistics. The first case study is on the referential metonymy of the capital-for-government type. The second case study deals with the illocutionary metonymy motivating a range of constructions that realize the instructional speech act in cooking recipes. The two case studies share a number of things. In both of them the basis is the question about the universality of a given metonymy. Another common thing is the motivation for the observed differences in the (non-)application of a given metonymy in a cross-linguistic perspective. The analysis includes a number of different languages and seems to show that the contrastive facts are ultimately motivated by some structural facts.