The chapters in the present volume may be roughly characterized as contributions to pragmatics from a cognitive linguistics perspective. Cognitive linguistics and modern pragmatics share a number of objects of inquiry, although their theoretical assumptions are often at odds. Both fields are, among other things, concerned with the investigation of principles of language use, the organization and functions of discourse, the conceptual and inferential nature of rhetorical tropes and figures of thought such as metaphor and metonymy, and the relation between language function and grammatical structure. The purpose of this introductory chapter is to point out some commonalities and differences between contemporary pragmatic approaches and cognitive linguistics, focusing on the relation between metonymy and pragmatic inference (for a useful overview of pragmatics and cognitive linguistics, see Marmaridou, 2000; for conceptual metonymy see the contributions in Panther and Radden, 1999; Barcelona, 2000; Dirven and Pörings, 2002; and the monograph by Ruiz de Mendoza and Otal Campo, 2002). We undertake this task at the risk of somewhat simplifying the issues at stake - given that neither pragmatics nor cognitive linguistics (especially the former) constitutes in itself a unified field of inquiry and theoretical orientation. (Klaus-Uwe Panther and Linda Thornburg)