Metonymy between pragmatics, reference, and diachrony

Abstract

Starting from the premise that metonymy can be unitarily defined as a frame-based figure/ground effect with respect to an invariant linguistic form, this article considers the pragmatic and referential features of the great variety of types of metonymies. We have to distinguish the following stages of metonymic semantic change in diachrony: 〈I〉 ad hoc metonymies relying on (universal) speech rules, 〈II〉 conventional metonymies relying on (historical) discourse rules, and 〈III〉 metonymic polysemies relying on (historical) language rules. As for the ad hoc stage 〈I〉, a detailed pragmatic analysis reveals a great divide between speaker-induced and hearer-induced metonymies. Further pragmatic and referential parameters yield a subclassification of speaker-induced metonymies into referent-oriented (Engl. The ham sandwich has asked for the bill) and concept-oriented (Engl. boor ‘peasant’ → ‘awkward person’). Concept-oriented metonymies may involve disjunct classes of referents (It. bustarella ‘little envelope’ → ‘bribe’ = referent-sensitive) or overlapping classes of referents (Engl. boor = non-referent-sensitive). On the other hand, concept-orientation may be pragmatically ‘soft’ (e.g. Fr. garage ‘garage’ → ‘service station’) or pragmatically ‘intense’ (euphemisms as It. bustarella and other types of expressive metonymies). The cognitively rather simple frame-based figure/ground effect underlying metonymy, it is claimed, lends itself to this particularly wide range of pragmatic and referential uses, distinguishing metonymy from all other tropes and explaining its omnipresence and high frequency.