Search

The paper brings the analysis of evidential units such as očividne, evidentne, zjavne (obviously, apparently, evidently) which show semantic extensions from direct visual perception meaning to assumption meaning. This semantic extension can be viewed as an example of the KNO WING is SEEING metaphor which arises on the basis of metonymy. The paper brings the corpus data to show various usage of the given units which can be interpreted as metonymical (from pre-metonymic through weak metonymic to partially metonymic readings). It is shown how metonymy and inference processes cooperate to produce the metaphoric extension TO SEE is TO KNOW. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By Naming their book as "language as Shield and Weapon", Allan and Burridge refer to two pragma-linguistic functions of a text: euphemistic language as shield and dysphemistic language as weapon. Dysphemism includes derogatory, name giving and any offensive terms which are used to humiliate others. In other words, any use of language, whether comprising abusive or not, which invokes the negative sense in addressee and makes him feel disdained, is accounted for dysphemism in language. Sometimes dysphemism takes a psychological aspect and that's when it doesn't necessarily happen to insult or violate taboos but its occurrence is due to some intrinsic motivations in the man. When a speaker minds to express strong affection, he ignores positive or negative quality of his inner feeling and chooses the most suitable linguistic sign to reflect its intensity. That is an expression normally used to induce negative affectivity. In this paper, we will take dysphemism in two meaning (as taboo word and as an impromptu psychological reaction). Dysphemism gives us ways of talking about the evaluative content of language insofar that it doesn't describe a thing in the world, but rather expresses the speaker's attitude towards it. Linguists believe that no feature in the word makes it banned & illegal or vice versa, legitimate & polite. The origin of this prohibition is customs and view of a society that enforces restrictive laws. This article seeks, taken descriptive-analytical method, to integrate the three approaches of semantics, rhetorics and pragmatics predominantly focusing on the fifth chapter of Mathnavi of Mowlavi, in order to answer the following questions: 1. What are the main reasons for using dysphemism as artistic tool in Mathnavi? 2. What linguistic tools have been used to create dysphemistic implications in Mathnavi? 3. How does each of these tools affect the form and content of message in the text? The reasons for occurrence of such expressions in Mathnavi can generally be categorized into four components: psychological-affective; aesthetic; stylistic; epistemologico- cultural. In aesthetic component, the poet has partly embraced the tradition of Persian and mystical poetry. In Mathnavi, dysphemisms are either satirical or humorous. But what matters is the difference between Rumi's satire and that of other Persian poets. Rumi is the first mystic-poet to use dysphemism in divulging mystical secrets. In field of epistemologico-cultural components, what is most relevant to the rhetoric of dysphemisms, is ideological polarization of "weother" applied by the author that exists in deep-structure of most of the figures in the text. Dysphemism is one of the linguistic signs of power which creates tension in the text by intensifying polarization (positive self-representation and negative otherrepresentation) with help of binary oppositions and contrasts. These expressions ultimately lead to the realization of the roles of mystical language (as: describing, consolidating and confirming of own accepted ideology); to the extent that all rhetorical and linguistic strategies in Mathnavi are based on these ideological oppositions. This study mentions the most frequent dysphemistic tools that are able to make stylistic foregrounding, namely: binary opposition, metaphor, irony and metonymy which play more distinctive role in language of the text. In discussion of opposition, external and internal opposition were mentioned and metaphorical opposition was introduced as a subtype of external ones. Metaphorical oppositions rendered the internal oppositional concepts into external layer in different ways, especially using animal category. Moreover, dysphemistic paradoxes are subtype of internal opposition which in contrast with euphemistic mystical paradoxes, carry a variety of purposes such as: jeer, disagreement, joking, surprising and drawing attention. Metaphor is another prominent stylistic factor in the text through the description of desirable/undesirable epistemological or cultural space. As far as sexuality is concerned, there are two types of metaphors: conceptual & literary. A common conceptual metaphor in Mathnavi is: "sex is eating". This metaphor results from the mapping between the source domain of "sex" and the target domain of "eating". In literary metaphors, from source and target domain, unlike the former one, only the source domain is taboo. While the taboo signifier unexpectedly points to a non-taboo and mystical signified. One of the reasons for resorting to vulgar metaphors in Mathnavi is desanctification of a concept by desanctifying its linguistic privacy so that; the language will not be a mask for distortion & lie. Irony can be divided into two categories: verbal and rhetorical (irony in the same western sense of the word). Ironies have two major pragmatic functions: 1) understatement; 2) overstatement. The former with semantic reduction and the latter with semantic extension try to be more representational. In artistic and humorous ironies, understatement is more dominant and in verbal ironies, that arises from folk language and has a controversial characteristic, overstatement is dominant function. Overstatement in these ironies makes them to work as an element for negative other-representation. In discussion of metonymy, we applied a division including: a) metonymy with more important rather than less important ranking (between two parts of metonymy) and b) metonymy without this ranking. From 84 dysphemistic metonymies, metonymy of specific/general relation with 48 frequencies was ranked first. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is the analysis of the locutions used by Cervantes, which include verbs of movement such as andar, caer, ir, venir or volver (volver las riendas, caer de su burra, andar de zoca en colodra, venir a las manos...). The reason for choosing these verbs is that, very frequently, they may give rise to metaphorical and metonymic processes. After defining the concept of locution and setting the corpus of locutions, we undertake their formal analysis (related to structure, level of fixation, potential variation, formal evolution...), their semantic study (meaning, semantic changes, metaphorical and metonymic processes) and we also analyze their contexts of occurrence and the registers in which they are used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Metaphor and metonymy are two mecanisms of basic conceptualization that justify the notional uses the verb motion go out as semantically derived from its corresponding prototypical uses. In this paper we will demonstrate that the abstract structures involving this verb can be explained by the projection of three basic image schemas: the path schema, the container schema and the whole-part schema (with its two metonymical directions: whole by part and part by whole). However, we will study others subsidiary image schemas of container and path metaphors: the force image schema, the process image schema, the fullempty image schema and the excess image schema. The examples were drawn from two oral corpora-Corpus oral de la variedad juvenil universitaria del español hablado en Alicante (COVJA) y Alicante, Corpus del español (ALCORE)-, where I have noticed a frequent use of these structures; and from one corpus written-CREA-, to which I have resorted in order to get a broaden database. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Category mistakes are sentences such as 'The number two is blue' or 'Green ideas sleep furiously'. Such sentences are highly infelicitous and thus a prominent view claims that they are meaningless. Category mistakes are also highly prevalent in figurative language. That is to say, it is very common for sentences which are used figuratively to be such that, if taken literally, they would constitute category mistakes. (Consider for example the metaphor 'The poem is pregnant', the metonymy 'The White House decided to change its policy', or a fictional use of 'The tree was happy'.) In this paper I argue that the view that category mistakes are meaningless is inconsistent with many central and otherwise plausible theories of figurative language. Thus if the meaninglessness view is correct, the theories in question must each be rejected, and conversely, if any of the theories in question is correct, the meaninglessness view must be wrong. The debates concerning the semantics of figurative language and concerning the semantic status of category mistakes are closely connected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the Accusative with to-infinitive Constructions in English that denote causative meaning, exemplified by She persuaded me to go to the hospital. Based on the five diagnostics, the syntactic structures of such constructions are clarified, and on the basis of two semantic perspectives, the semantic structures of the causative verbs occurring therein are defined. Finally, the issue of how the syntactic structures are derived from the semantic structures is addressed by way of the Lexical Conceptual Structures and the Qualia Structures of four types of causative to-infinitive verbs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we will try to offer an analysis of multimodal representations in a sample of Riojan wine labels. Basic formal operation such as cueing has allowed us to present metonymic and metaphoric relations existing between brand names, their origins, Riojan culture as well as viticultural aspects. We present four models of pictorial metaphors and a model of blended space. The role of these conceptual mappings in meaning derivation is relevant in multimodal genre as well as in the communicative functions of wine labels. In this study we have considered ontological metonymies (Kövecses & Radden, 1998), formal and content cognitive operations (Ruiz de Mendoza, 2001, 2011) as well as multimodal representations (Forceville, 2005, 2009). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]