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The current article offers a comparative account of the address system of two dialects of Arabic, Najdi and Tunisian Arabic. Capitalizing on the theory of Idealized Cognitive Model, the article defends the view that the two systems display Idealized models, which are central to the system, and non-Idealized models, which are peripheral to it. Najdi Arabic includes Idealized terms such as first names, teknonyms, and kinship terms while non-Idealized models include a battery of terms of address. Tunisian Arabic Idealized models hinge on Si/Lalla + first names, first names, and kinship terms while non-Idealized models make use of endeared first names, kinship terms, and diminished kinship terms. The two systems are shown to differ at the level of types of encounter (including formality, closeness, and deference), availability of address options, social horizontality-verticality, and use of metaphor and metonymy.

Metaphors and other tropes are commonly thought to reflect asymmetries in concreteness, with concrete sources being used to talk about relatively more abstract targets synchronically. Similarly, originating senses in diachronic semantic change have often been argued to be more concrete than extended senses. In this paper, we use a dataset of cross-linguistically attested semantic changes to empirically test the idea that asymmetries in figurative language are predicted by asymmetries in concreteness. We find only weak evidence for the role of concreteness and argue that concreteness is not a helpful notion when it comes to describing changes where both originating and extended senses are highly concrete (e.g., skin > bark, liver > lungs). Moreover, we find that word frequency data from English and other languages is a stronger predictor of these typologically common semantic changes. We discuss the implications of our findings for metaphor theory and theories of semantic change.

This article presents an original three-component model of the linguistic sign. It shares with the established triadic models of Peirce (1955 [1897]) and Ogden and Richards (1923/1949) in identifying thought, word and thing as essential components; but differs in being linear, with thought and thing at opposite poles. It is argued that this arrangement reflects the way the components of the sign relate to reality and thereby serves well as an explanatory tool for linguistic research. The model is further modified at each of the ontological realms using concepts from cognitive linguistics, renamed cognition, language and reality. The new model is employed as a research tool in two case studies: one illustrates its use in making sense of the complex field of language grammar; the other does the same for figurative language – metaphor and metonymy. The article’s conclusions include that interrogating established cornerstones of linguistic theory in the light of new theory can lead to the development of improved research tools.

The significance of language in clinical practice first emerged with the Anna O. case, a study by Freud. Lacan went on to support Freud’s findings. Through the Back to Freud movement, Lacan proved language to be crucial from theoretical and clinical perspectives. According to Lacan, the name of the father in the language used by the mother functions as a signifier for the mother’s desire. It corresponds to the first repression and enters the symbolic register. It refers to Lacan’s famous statement ‘Unconscious is structured like a language’. As such, in his theory, Lacan actively uses the concepts of signifier, signified, metaphor and metonymy and offers new interpretations of these concepts. Therefore, to study the unconscious, working with language is the main method. However, because of repression, the unconscious can only be studied through the traces it shows in language. In this article, traces of the unconscious in language are explained using clinical examples. Clarifications are provided as to how traces of the unconscious can be studied analytically.

Religious symbols are often treated as mysterious, and even magical, links between the visible and the invisible worlds. They also lie in the nature of Christianity: they are present in its languag...

Illocutionary force indicating devices are something of a neglected topic in visual/multimodal intercultural pragmatics, although a number of scholars have observed that some non-verbal speech-act ...

Except for metaphor and metonymy, the study of most traditional figures of speech has largely been neglected in Cognitive Linguistics. This article attempts to fill this gap by exploring a broad range of figures of speech in terms of their dependency relations and organizational patterns. It distinguishes between basic and non-basic figures of speech, where the latter arise from variants of the basic cognitive operations that shape the former. It then discusses these figures in terms of their interrelationships, their shared features, and the attitudinal or denotational nature of their meaning effects. The result is a unified account of figurative language.

Over the last few years there has been a rapprochement between Cognitive Linguistics and semantic theories of humour based on the notion of script or frame. By drawing on Ritchie’s version of the theory of frame-shifting (2005) and reviewing the cognitive linguistic account of humour, we shall demonstrate how the interpretation of jokes containing a metaphor or a metonymy involves two cognitive-pragmatic tasks: the completion of the metaphorical/metonymic mapping that results in a new frame, and the resolution of the joke’s incongruity via a contrast with the surrounding frames of the joke. We also develop a classification of frame shifts according to their ontological structure (non-metaphorical/metonymic shifts and shifts based on metaphorical and/or metonymic reasoning) and the degree of the interpreter’s inferential activity (conceptual filling out and metaphor/metonymy replacement). In doing so, we attempt to identify some of the defining features of humorous metaphors and metonymies, as well as other phenomena that may also characterise jokes.

Metaphor and metonymy are likely the most common forms of non-literal language. As metaphor and metonymy differ conceptually and in how easy they are to comprehend, it seems likely that they also differ in their degree of non-literalness. They frequently occur in idioms which are foremost non-literal, fixed expressions. Given that non-literalness seems to be the defining criterion of what constitutes an idiom, it is striking that no study so far has focused specifically on differing non-literalness in idioms. It is unclear whether and how metaphoric and metonymic structures and their properties are perceived in idioms, given that the comprehension of idioms is driven by a number of other properties that are connected. This study divides idioms according to their metonymic or metaphoric structure and lets participants rate their non-literalness, familiarity, and transparency. It focuses on non-literalness as key property, finds it strongly connected to transparency, and to be the one key factor in predicting idiom type. Specifically, it reveals that metonymies are generally perceived as rather or even extremely literal, while metaphors are generally perceived as highly non-literal.

Research on figurative meaning in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) would benefit from considering a greater variety of data types and using more diverse methods. Previous studies have predominantly applied experimental methods to investigate processing of figurative language (mostly metaphor) and have for the most part concluded that individuals with ASD have deficits in figurative language comprehension. In this study, we focus on the creation and communication of figurative meaning in discursively situated and thematically organized verbal, gestural, and pictorial data published by an autistic artist in the form of videos and comics. Across three prominent experiential themes in the data, we isolate types of conceptualizations and generalize over mappings between target and source experiences. We find that the data are rich in figurative meaning expression (e.g., metaphor and metonymy) conveyed through language, co-speech gestures, and pictures in ways that are clearly embodied (experientially based) and that reflect affordances and constraints of these modes of communication. While our case study of meaning production does not contradict previous research on figurative meaning comprehension in populations, it does indicate benefits of taking a broader and multimodal approach to figurative meaning in research on ASD.

Political cartoons make meaning by drawing on scenarios that must be immediately recognizable by their intended audience. Crucial meaning-making mechanisms in these scenarios are verbo-visual ensembles of metaphors and metonymies. In this paper we investigate 69 Chinese and 60 American political cartoons published in 2018 and 2019 that pertain to the two nations’ trade conflict. By examining the cross-cultural similarities and differences between metaphors and metonymies, we chart how Chinese and American cartoonists portray this trade conflict. We end by showing how a complete interpretation of the cartoons requires enrichment with insights provided by yet other analytical instruments.

To date, research in advertising has focussed almost exclusively on metaphor, with linguists and marketing scholars paying very little attention to alternative types of figurative expression. Beyond the finding that metaphor leads to an increased appreciation of advertisements, there has been surprisingly little research into how consumer response is affected by metonymy, or by metaphor–metonymy interactions. In this article, we present findings from a study that investigated the depth to which participants (n = 90) from a range of cultural and linguistic backgrounds (the UK, Spain, and China) were found to process 30 real-world adverts featuring creative metaphor and metonymy in multimodal format. We focus on the cross-cultural variation in terms of time taken to process, appreciation and perceived effectiveness of adverts, and on individual differences explained by different levels of need for cognition. We found significant variation in the understanding of advertisements containing metaphor, metonymy, and combinations of the two, between subjects and across nationalities in terms of (i) processing time, (ii) overall appeal, and (iii) the way in which participants interpreted the advertisements.

The creation of national personifications is a political act that informs us about ideological and cognitive strategies underpinning nation-building. Many European nations are associated with national personifications, but Scotland stands out by not having a tradition of representing the nation in this way. The 2014 independence referendum began to change that, and national personifications featured, not only in the main pro-independence campaign material, but in the visual profile of many new, radical organizations. These personifications also raise questions about the use of metaphor in political discourse. By combining multimodal metaphor and metonymy analysis with interviews with artists who have designed Scottish personifications for the independence movement, this article investigates how new Scottish body politic metaphors were constructed during the campaign. This methodology increases our understanding of the wider context of the referendum, and aids the interpretation of national personifications by providing arguments for interpretation. The analysis shows that body politic metaphors used in the campaign draw on traditional Scottish symbols, but traditional body politic metaphor types are subverted, typically concerning gender roles, in order to convey messages that are relevant in a contemporary political landscape.

Theories on metaphor and metonymy make different claims about the nature of the underlying processes in the computation of these two types of language use, i.e., whether they differ or not. Experimental investigations of metonymy and metaphor have generally not compared these two phenomena in a straightforward manner among others due to structural variability. To overcome this shortcoming, we conducted a study in German that used adjective–noun combinations to contrast metaphor and metonymy directly in an ERP-study during reading for comprehension. By combining three different nouns with one adjective in predicative position we construed adjective–noun pairs with literal (the baby was lively), metonymic (the eyes were lively) or metaphoric (the speed was lively) relations. The data revealed a more pronounced N400 for the metaphoric relations in comparison to the literal controls. We argue that the enhanced cost for metaphors reflects the activation process of two unrelated domains via mapping or extended predication. The metonymic adjective–noun pairs only showed a small trend to differ from the other two conditions. This might indicate that metonymies require mapping processes or shifts only within a single domain or domain matrix. Moreover, in contrast to previous studies, we did not find a Late Positivity. We explain this result with regard to different discourse representational consequences arising during combinatorial processing.

This study aims to identify the metaphors and metonymies used to describe economic concepts in Jordanian economic discourse pre- and post-Arab Spring in order to examine whether the events of the Arab Spring have had an impact on these figurative devices. This study also examines whether metaphor and metonymy can be affected by the social and cultural setting in which they are used and by politico-economic factors. In addition, this study aims to explore the notion that economic discourse uses many of the same conceptual metaphors regardless of the language and culture. To achieve this, I compiled a corpus of economic articles published in 2005 and 2008 (i.e. pre-Arab Spring) and 2012 and 2015 (i.e. post-Arab Spring) from two daily Jordanian newspapers. Frequency counts of metaphorical expressions representing the source domains and metonymies were compared to assess their saliency in the two periods and the two newspapers.

This study provides an analysis of Arabic metaphorical and/or metonymical compounds, extracted from a 20,000-word corpus, based on Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Conceptual Blending Theory. The analysis focuses on the semantic transparency of these compounds, on the one hand, and their linguistic creativity, on the other. In line with Benczes (2006,2010), we suggest that the comprehension of Arabic metaphorical and/or metonymical compounds is possibly one of degree depending on which element is affected by metaphor and metonymy. Here, it is proposed that there are compounds which are more creative than others. We argue that in addition to the degree of semantic transparency and linguistic creativity of Arabic metaphorical and/or metonymical compounds, there are other factors that can influence the comprehension of these compounds; namely, the frequency of the compound, the conventionality of the metaphors involved in the compound and whether conceptual metonymy acts on the compound. Our proposal is supported by the judgments of 12 native-speaker informants, who were asked to provide the meaning of 35 Arabic metaphorical and/or metonymical compounds. The study concludes with recommendations for further research.

The present study investigates the semantic structure of the word near assuming that its distinct senses form a semantic network with a prototypical spatial sense at the center and various extended senses at different distances away from the prototype. In order to explain the extensions of near, the cognitive notions of construal, image schema transformation, metaphor and metonymy are taken into consideration. The conceptual blending theory is used to explain the semantic structure of the complex preposition near to. The research reveals that the word near functions as a preposition (also a part of the complex preposition near to), an adverb, an adjective and a verb, and that its semantic structure is best viewed as a continuum encoding both lexical and grammatical information. At the same time, the analysis shows that the polysemy of near is rather impoverished when compared to the polysemies of other spatial prepositions, such as in, on, at or over.

The study of metaphorization processes in scientific texts is essential in terminological studies and the conceptual representation of specialized knowledge. It is considered to be a prolific tool in the creation of neologisms. Many cognitive models tried to study metaphorisation processes by drawing on metaphor and metonymy based on linguistic evidence. However, recent studies have highlighted the necessity of carrying out empirical tests in order to provide refined results that go beyond the traditional theories of conceptual metaphor and metonymy. This paper analyzes the underlying metaphor in the ‘carbon capture and sequestration’ event in both English and Arabic. It also discusses the influence of English, the lingua franca, in the transfer of the neologism ‘carbon capture and sequestration’, via translation processes, and its role in the so-called domain loss in the target language. Results were obtained through a corpus-based contrastive terminological analysis, extracted from specialized texts in English and Arabic in the subdomain of climate change. Data analysis was approached from the perspective of Frame-Based Terminology and Conceptual Complexes., FFI2017-89127-P Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness

La metaphore est reconnue comme un mecanisme important de changement lexical et semantique et est un outil particulierement productif pour creer de nouveaux euphemismes afin de mentionner des sujets tabous (Crespo Fernandez [2006]). Cet article se concentre sur les metaphores de la mort, et plus particulierement sur l’influence possible qu’ont les interactions entre la metaphore et la metonymie sur la nature X-phemistique (Allan & Burridge [1991], [2006]) des metaphores de la mort et sur leur utilisation euphemistique continue en langue anglaise. Il s’appuie sur 122 occurrences metaphoriques tirees de trois series televisees differentes (Six Feet Under, House, M.D. et Grey’s Anatomy), recueillies selon les recommandations du groupe Pragglejaz [2007]. Un nombre important d’occurrences de metaphores de la mort (principalement celles utilisant des domaines sources tels que journey, loss, ou rest, par exemple) ont tendance a etre figees et plutot euphemiques, ce qui semble confirmer ce qui etait indique ou suggere dans des travaux anterieurs (voir Allan & Burridge [1991], [2006], Bultinck [1998] ou Crespo Fernandez [2006]). Il semble que les interactions entre metonymie et metaphore (voir Goossens [2002], Geeraerts [2002], Ruiz de Mendoza & Galera-Masegosa [2011], Kovecses [2013]) expliquent en partie la nature euphemique de ces metaphores : en raison de l’omnipresence de la dichotomie corps-esprit dans les religions et les cultures occidentales, les metaphores de la mort sont souvent combinees a des metonymies dans lesquelles une personne decedee est soit conceptualisee comme un corps mort, soit comme une âme. Les conceptualisations du corps mort ont tendance a etre dysphemiques (comme dans les realisations des metaphores a dead body is rotting food) tandis que les conceptualisations de l’âme du defunt ont tendance a etre euphemiques (comme dans les realisations des metaphores death is a journey). Il s’agit egalement de prendre en compte la dimension diachronique des X-phemismes dans la mesure ou certains emplois sont attestes depuis le XIIe siecle ; le processus d’usure de l’euphemisme (qui pourrait etre defini comme le phenomene de changement lexical resultant de l’evolution semantique des euphemismes existants) semble etre plus lent pour les metaphores de la mort, qui ont tendance a etre combinees a des metonymies (comme a person is a soul), que pour les metaphores d’autres domaines tabous.

On the basis of corpus data and in consonance with cognitively-oriented constructionist approaches to language, mainly the work by Goldberg (1995, 2006) and the developments in Ruiz de Mendoza and Mairal (2008, 2011), we ofer a fine-grained analysis of some specific instantiations of the resultative pattern based on the prepositional phrase to death. The analysis starts of from the classification of verb classes made by Levin (1993). The verbs in some of these classes are readily available for fusion into the resultative configuration. Others call for reconstrual in terms of high-level metaphor and/or metonymy before they can conform to the requirements of the pattern mentioned above. Thus, we focus on the way in which the resultative pattern overwrites the properties of some lexical groups of verbs through the licensing activity of such cognitive mechanisms as high-level metaphor and metonymy. Additionally, the prepositional phrase to death is shown to perform two key communicative functions from among those put forward by Boas (2003): placing emphasis on an end point or rendering a vague point clear. Finally, the paper examines the hyperbolic load of the PP to death in some contexts where this PP is seen as converting an argument-structure construction into an implicational one conveying the speaker's (usually negative) reaction to a given state of affairs. © John Benjamins Publishing Company.

In recent work, idioms have in many traditions been assimilated to the study of metaphor. An idiom such as ‘spill the beans’ is understood against the conceptual metaphors, THE MIND IS A CONTAINER and IDEAS ARE ENTITIES for instance. Such a treatment implies that idioms are processed online, calling up in their production the conceptual metaphors which support them. In this article an alternative treatment is put forward whereby idioms are lexical in nature. The argument has two parts. First, the constituent collocates of idioms share a number of key grammatical properties with non-idiomatic lexemes. Even in their idiomatic usage they must in some sense be normal lexemes. Secondly, at the same time, idioms are shown to be distinctive in terms of their discourse properties, in particular the fact of idiomaticity restricting the referentiality of idiomatic nouns. Drawing broadly on ideas developed within psycholinguistic treatments of idiomaticity, a model of idioms is developed whereby idioms are seen as lexically compositional against a rich polysemy of their stipulated, constituent lexemes. While, it may be inferred, metonymic and metaphoric associations led to the lexical polysemy of the constituent collocates, metonymy and metaphor play no necessary role in their online production and processing. The argument is developed on the basis of a detailed discussion of idioms in Nigerian Arabic. The data derives from a large, oral corpus (400,000 words), in which the conventional nature of idiomaticity is underscored by the quantitative preponderance of idiomatic meanings among basic body part nouns such as ṛaas ‘head’ and gaḷb ‘heart’.

In recent years, Cognitive Linguistics (CL) has established itself not only as a solid theoretical approach but also as an important source from which different applications to other fields have emerged. In this introductory article, we explore some of the current, most relevant topics in applied CL-oriented studies grouped into three main strands: Analyses of figurative language (both metaphor and metonymy) in use, constructions and typology. An outline of the contents of the eight chapters included in this special issue is provided, explaining their contributions to these research areas and highlighting their methodological rigour.

In this paper I analyze the role of metaphor and metonymy in framing conflict events. In particular, when framing a terrorist attack in media discourse these two linguistic elements are crucial for the interpretation of the event. The data from two Russian newspapers, the “Novaja Gazeta” and the “Rossijskaja Gazeta”, show how metaphorical and metonymical processes are used to promote a particular interpretation and modify the structure of the event itself.

In recent decades, the development of the Conceptual Metaphor Theory, put forward by Lakoff and other scholars. In this light, metaphor and metonymy have been found to provide a semantic motivation for a considerable number of idiomatic expressions. Within this framework, the present contribution explores the cognitive motivation of food idioms in English (e.g., &lsquo, be a cup of tea,&rsquo, &lsquo, bread and butter,&rsquo, walking on eggshells&rsquo, ) and Spanish (e.g., darse pisto, tener mala uva, cortar el bacalao). The analysis reveals that idiomatic meaning often relies on metaphoric amalgams and metonymic chains, or on the interaction between metaphor and metonymy.

Resumen: Esta investigación estudia el proceso mediante el cual se forman las locuciones preposicionales en español, desde la teoría de la gramaticalización y un enfoque cognitivo centrado en la extensión semántica por procesos asociativos de metáfora y metonimia. Una vez presentados estos fundamentos teóricos, la investigación se centra en el análisis concreto de dos formas controvertidas dentro de las locuciones preposicionales: en cabeza de y a la cabeza de. El estudio de estas dos estructuras comienza por la revisión de su sustantivo núcleo en los diccionarios históricos del español. A continuación, se presenta una revisión de ambas construcciones en los principales corpus históricos (CORDE, CREA y CORPES XXI) que tiene como objetivo observar cómo han evolucionado estas formas a través del tiempo, para establecer en qué momento, y a través de qué procesos, se han ido fijando como estructuras cohesionadas del español.

Audiovisual work is significant in its narrative and created images. Conveyance, recognition and experiences of characters’ emotions are not disregarded. By using the most elaborated audio and visual means, filmmakers try not only to involve the viewers in the film plot but also encourage them to discover characters’ emotions and feelings, go through their experiences and perceive their emotional transformation. This article aims at revealing the conceptualisation of transformation of characters’ love emotions in the film “Pleasantville”. Cognitive metaphor and metonymy theories as well as the identified multimodal meaning making resources indicating the embodiment of prevailing love emotions are applied in the analysis. Firstly, emotions, their notion, typology and somatic aspects of love emotions are discussed. Then the focus is put on multimodal constructions and their audiovisual expression. The empirical part of the article deals with the analysis of the most intense love emotions discerned in the film, namely, ecstasy and admiration, paying the primary attention to the multimodal modes used to reveal their conceptualisation.

Xiehouyu is a linguistic phenomenon unique to Chinese. A xiehouyu normally follows or precedes something said or some statement, which serves as the topic, and the saying is a kind of vehicle plus explanation about the topic. This study, based on a corpus of 1000 Chinese xiehouyus , PUCC (Peking University Chinese Corpus) and some questionnaire surveys, finds that xiehouyus differ from other types of metaphor or metonymies in that the explanation of a xiehouyu is always spelled out when first used, or used when addressing someone who the speaker supposes is not familiar with the phrase. This gives a xiehouyu the advantage of selecting anything that might bear some similarity or contiguity relationship to the discourse topic to trigger or comment on the topic. But paradoxically, in actual usage, either the antecedent or the consequent may sometimes be omitted, especially when the xiehouyu in case has been “entrenched” or is relatively familiar to the speaker or hearer. This indicates that either the antecedent or the consequent just serves as a trigger for a connection between the topic and vehicle or the ground. The study also finds that in some cases (about 30%), the selection of a vehicle in a xiehouyu is random, which suggests that in using a phrase like this, the speaker is more interested in creating a special (often humorous or comic) discourse effect than using the metaphor or metonymy to achieve a cognitive effect, thus the more interpersonal nature of certain types of metaphorical language.

The notion of “conceptual mapping”, as a set of correspondences between conceptual domains, was popularized in Cognitive Semantics, following seminal work by Lakoff & Johnson (1980), as a way of accounting for the basic cognitive activity underlying metaphor and metonymy. Strangely enough, Cognitive Semantics has paid little, if any, attention to other cases of so-called figurative language such as hyperbole, irony, paradox, and oxymoron. This paper contends that it is possible to account for these and other figures of thought in terms of the notion of conceptual mapping. It argues that the differences between these and other figurative uses of language are a matter of the nature of the domains involved in mappings and how they are made to correspond. Additionally, this paper examines constraints on mappings and concludes that the same factors that constrain metaphor and metonymy are operational in the case of mappings for the other figures of thought under discussion.

The vocabulary of emotion terms has been treated both within and across cultures. Emotion terms, especially terms of universal emotion concepts, have been largely discussed. What has received little or no attention at all is the state of no emotion. The paper explores this state in English and Greek. It discusses the terms and the mechanisms (metaphors and metonymies) that feature in expressions showing no emotion. It will be argued (a) that the interplay between metaphor and metonymy is a very important operation for the conceptualization of no emotion; (b) in addition to shared experience, the culture-specific schemas govern this state in the two languages.

La metáfora y la metonimia amplifican el sistema expresivo que ha tejido el séptimo arte a lo largo de su historia. Nos interesa mostrar cómo dichas figuras son capaces de producir sentido más allá de las formas clásicas del lenguaje. Sin negar su rol funcional, su verdadera fuerza radica en su uso poético. Ambas figuras operan como estrategias narrativas que permiten hacer variaciones sobre la narrativa clásica y que dan pie a procesos transtextuales. En calidad de análisis de caso realizamos una exegesis de cuatro filmes que pertenecen al cine clásico de Hollywood y al cine postmoderno para mostrar el funcionamiento de la metáfora y la metonimia en dos momentos diferentes de la historia del cine.Metaphor and metonymy amplify the expressive system that has woven the seventh art throughout its history. We want to show how these figures are capable of producing meaning beyond the classical forms of language. Without denying their functional role, its real strength lies in its poetic use. Both figures operate as narrative strategies that make variations on the classic narrative and give rise to trans-textual processes. As a case analysis, we did an exegesis of four films that belong to classic Hollywood cinema and postmodern cinema to show the operation of metaphor and metonymy in two different moments in the history of cinema.

Flora and fauna play a vital role in Indigenous cultures and their nomenclature reveals much about the society from which they belong. This article identifies the lexical structures and types of metaphor and metonymy that are used for naming plants and animals in Kaytetye, a language of central Australia. By linking semantic analysis to detailed ethnography this paper elucidates the cultural connections that underlie polysemous biota terms. Various types of semantic extension are found, including ‘sign metonymy’, where two or more species share a name because one signals the availability of the other. A subtype of this is what I call ‘meaningful call’ metonymy. This is where an onomatopoeic bird name has lexical content, and thus the bird ‘says’ the signalled phenomena. The paper also finds that alternate register terms turn up in everyday words for biota. The aim of this paper is thus twofold: to demonstrate the importance of investigating socio-cultural practices, multiple speech registers and ecologica...

the versatile research carried out in political linguistics has revealed the peculiarities of political texts thereby opening vast possibilities for a fruitful application of the findings to the curriculum of an EsP course of English for Politics corresponding to C1/C2 level of CEFR (2001). the present study analyses the knowledge and experience of students of political science in identifying, using and analyzing metaphor and metonymy in political discourse in the English language. Methodologically, the study is a small scale analysis carried out with the use of a questionnaire delivered to 55 students, where students are asked to answer questions with respect to their general knowledge and understanding of the use of metaphor and metonymy. they are further asked to identify metaphorical and metonymical expressions in a piece of political discourse. Finally, they are requested to express their opinion about the role of metaphor and metonymy in the creation of political texts. the results show that students demonstrate quite good theoretical knowledge of figurative language, namely metaphor and metonymy, however, their discourse analytical skills are rather poor. this conclusion can be made on the basis of students answer to the self-evaluative questions placed to them and on the basis of the given practical task.

EFL learners may face different degrees of difficulty in transferring figurative expressions between L1 and L2 due to cultural similarities and differences embedded in languages. This study explores the influence of universality and specificity of culture on EFL learners' comprehension of metaphor and metonymy. Twenty eight Taiwanese EFL learners were asked to translate 12 English sentences into Chinese. Findings indicate that the participants performed the best when English and Chinese shared the same conceptual metaphors, and performed the worst when conceptual metaphors were distinct. The findings both support and qualify the interlanguage continuum of L2 acquisition. Suggestions to integrate conceptual metaphors and metonymies so as to effectively raise EFL learners' awareness of abstract concepts are made for future empirical research.

Humour is part of human communication and can serve as an effective means for making contact, finding a way out of an embarrassing situation, or mitigating different political and social tensions. However, not all humans are born capable of generating and processing humour and it remains an open question whether it is possible to learn and develop this ability. Therefore, a sense of humour, but not an *ability of humour, would be a frequent collocation in many languages. Cognitive linguists claim that collocations are not accidental as combinability patterns point to certain conceptualisation processes in the expression of meaning. The cognitive linguistic viewpoint that humour is based on a mismatch, or incongruity, between ideas, otherwise referred to as frame shifting, is adopted as a prerequisite for producing humour in this paper.The focus of this paper is the expression of verbal humour dealing with the introduction of the euro in Lithuania in 2015. Verbal humour is created by employing different linguistic resources: sounds, spelling, word building models, homonymy and polysemy, word combinations and other syntactic structures and larger chunks of texts or discourse. The investigation is based on the main theories of humour: the Semantic Script Theory and the Superiority Theory developed by Attardo (1994) and Raskin (1985). The empirical material consists of 89 cases of verbal humour found in posts and comments in personal profiles and pages on Facebook and in reader comments following different articles in popular news portals written from September 2014 to February 2015. The paper attempts to describe linguistic means contributing to the construction of humour as well as to identify the shifts between frames involved in generating the humorous effect. The results of the investigation suggest that most humorous comments bear content-related political implications, shifting between the frames of the loss of national currency perceived either as the loss of stability or as the loss of national identity and the frame of positive expectations due to the greater integration into the EU. The techniques used to construct humour include wordplay based on sound combinations, similar spelling, non-standard spelling, and code-switching involving English and Russian. An especially productive technique was the construction of existing or non-existing words by code-mixing and the use of metaphor and metonymy. Larger chunks of text also employ intertextuality, parody, switching between registers and different types of echoing.

Event-related potentials (ERPs) were used to investigate the time-course of meaning activation of different types of ambiguous words. Unbalanced homonymous (‘‘pen’’), balanced homonymous (‘‘panel’’), metaphorically polysemous (‘‘lip’’), and metonymically polysemous words (‘‘rabbit’’) were used in a visual single-word priming delayed lexical decision task. The theoretical distinction between homonymy and polysemy was reflected in the N400 component. Homonymous words (balanced and unbalanced) showed effects of dominance/frequency with reduced N400 effects predominantly observed for dominant meanings. Polysemous words (metaphors and metonymies) showed effects of core meaning representation with both dominant and subordinate meanings showing reduced N400 effects. Furthermore, the division within polysemy, into metaphor and metonymy, was supported. Differences emerged in meaning activation patterns with the subordinate meanings of metaphor inducing differentially reduced N400 effects moving from left hemisphere electrode sites to right hemisphere electrode sites, potentially suggesting increased involvement of the right hemisphere in the processing of figurative meaning.

This combined paper will focus on the description of two selected lexical patterns in Saudi Arabian Sign Language (SASL): metaphor and metonymy in emotion-related signs (Young) and lexicalization patterns of objects and their derivational roots (Palmer and Reynolds). The over-arcing methodology used by both studies is detailed in Stephen and Mathur (this volume). However, study-specific methodology is included in the separate methodology sections below.

Although metaphor has always been a main concern in TS, little has been done to apply a far-raging cognitive theory of metaphor and metonymy to translation. As a rule, the few authors that have tried to deal with it are eclectic in their cognitive approach and show a prescriptive bias as concerns translation theory. However, thanks to the influence of disciplines like Cognitive Linguistics, among others, Descriptive Translation Studies (DTS) can undertake a more realistic study of metaphor translation which reflects the true nature of metaphor and the underlying regularities of its interlinguistic transfer, including cases excluded a priori by traditional studies for being ‘unfaithful’, ‘anomalous’ or ‘incorrect’ renderings.

In this paper, I discuss the operation of metonymy and the interaction of metaphor and metonymy in the grammaticalization of prepositions into prefixes. The metonymic shift that allows the integration of the prefix with the base can take place directly in cases in which both elements share the same domain. When two different domains are involved, the previous operation of a metaphor that neutralizes ontological differences between domains is required. To examine the metonymic and metaphoric operations, I take two Polish prepositions (na ‘on’ and do ‘to’) that have become prefixes and have changed the meaning of two specific verbs to which they have been attached, pakowac ‘put things into a container’ and myślec ‘think’, respectively. The first verb belongs to the domain of physical space, while the second does not. The analysis is conducted within the framework of Cognitive Grammar, which takes the view that all grammatical elements in language are meaningful and that they impose and symbolize particular ...

Based on the previous research, this paper makes a systematic study of the working mechanism of decategorizaiton of nouns in Mandarin Chinese, employing the theories of metaphor and metonymy and the theory of duality of concept. The major findings are as follows: metonymy-metaphor interaction is the working mechanism in the decategorization of nouns in Mandarin Chinese, mainly metaphor from metonymy, with metonymy and metaphor, functioning at different stages of decategorization. At the initial stage, the basic working mechanism is WHOLE-PART METONYMY. By this mechanism, a certain meaning component in the type notion domain of a noun is highlighted through metonymical constituent perspectivization and subjectivization, expressing descriptive or assertive meaning related to the noun. At the final stage, the working mechanism is mainly categorical metaphor, of which the source domain is the token notion of a typical noun with concrete meaning while the target domain is the type notion with abstract sense intended to express in communication.

Reviewed by Heli Tissari Reviewed by Heli Tissari Research Unit for Variation, Contacts and Change in English Department of Modern Languages University of Helsinki, Finland heli.tissari@helsinki.fi...

While cognitive linguists have been successful at providing accounts of the stable knowledge structures (conceptual metaphors) that give rise to figurative language, and the conceptual mechanisms that manipulate these knowledge structures (conceptual blending), relatively less effort has been thus far devoted to the nature of the linguistic mechanisms involved in figurative language understanding. This paper presents a theoretical account of figurative language understanding, examining metaphor and metonymy in particular. This account is situated within the Theory of Lexical Concepts and Cognitive Models (LCCM Theory). LCCM Theory (Evans, Cognitive Linguistics 17: 491–534, 2006, How words mean: Lexical concepts, cognitive models and meaning construction, Oxford University Press, 2009b) is a cognitively realistic model of lexical representation and semantic compositionality, providing, it is argued, an account of figurative language which complements the ‘backstage’ cognition perspective of Conceptual Blending Theory. It also integrates the notion of conceptual metaphor within the account provided of figurative language understanding. The paper introduces the key mechanisms involved in figurative language understanding arising from language use. The paper also provides a programmatic account of how conceptual metaphors are integrated with linguistic knowledge in figurative language use. It is argued the present proposals flesh out a key aspect of the conceptual integration perspective promoted by Fauconnier and Turner, with which LCCM Theory is continuous. In part, the paper attempts to advance the prospect of a ‘joined up’ cognitive linguistic account of figurative language understanding.

This article focuses on how the human body and body parts such as the legs, abdomen, and torso are conceptualized in Spanish director Pedro Almodovar's films. The comparative analysis follows a qualitative methodology in which instances of the use of body parts are analyzed within their multimodal, sociocultural, and cinematic contexts. Through camera work and mise-en-scene, the actors' bodies and bodily functions are mapped onto complex cultural, social, and filmic targets within the narrative structure. Ultimately, the author shows how artistic creativity is an activity whose purpose is a reembodiment of the emotion by visual and physical alteration. The new body is an environment onto which traditional views of the body based on folk theories are mapped, and body parts and functions are metonymically highlighted.

This paper continues the debate about how to distinguish metaphor from metonymy, and whether this can be done. It examines some of the differences that have been alleged to exist, and augments the already existing doubt about them. The main differences addressed are the similarity/contiguity distinction and the issue of whether source-target links are part of the message in metonymy or metaphor. In particular, the paper argues that metaphorical links can always be used metonymically and regarded as contiguities, and conversely that two particular, central types of metonymic contiguity essentially involve similarity. The paper also touches briefly on how metaphor and metonymy interact with domains, frames, etc. and on the role of imaginary identification/categorization of target as/under source items. With the possible exception of this last issue, the paper suggests that no combination of the alleged differences addressed can serve cleanly to categorize source/target associations into metaphorical ones and metonymic ones. It also suggests that it can be more profitable to analyse utterances at the level of the dimensions involved in the differences than at the higher level of metaphor and metonymy as such.

This paper argues that ideological metaphors can be special cases of conceptual interaction between metaphor and metonymy, along with synecdoche. We focus on a specific type of ideological metaphor, advertising gender metaphors. Within a cognitive semantic–pragmatic framework we have described and analysed the strategies and complex conceptual metaphoric–metonymic/synecdochic patterns in a case study of 292 advertising gender metaphors taken from a corpus of 1610 advertising metaphors present in 1142 commercial ads published in British Cosmopolitan. Metonymy, along with synecdoche, has been shown, as far as the above analysis of advertising gender metaphors is concerned, to precede in all but one of the various types and subtypes of this concrete type of ideological metaphor. The existence of underlying patterns of metonymic (and synecdochic) motivation used for gender assignment is, therefore, proven and evidence is given for Taylor's view (1995:138) that all (ideological) metaphors may necessarily need underlying metonymisations. It also supports Dirven (1993) , Croft (1993) , Barcelona, 2000a , Barcelona, 2000b , Radden's (2000) , Ruiz de Mendoza Ibanez (2000) and Geeraerts’ (2003) idea of a metaphor–metonymy continuum with the intermediate notion of metonymy-based metaphors.