LINGUIST List 25.2998
Mon
Jul 21 2014
Confs: Pragmatics,
Cognitive Science/Belgium
Editor for this issue:
Anna White <awhitelinguistlist.org>
Date: 19-Jul-2014
From: Xinren Chen
<cxr3354182
163.com>
Subject: Understanding
Metonymy: Context and Cognition
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Understanding Metonymy: Context and
Cognition
Date: 26-Jul-2015 - 31-Jul-2015
Location: Antwerp, Belgium
Contact: Xinren Chen
Contact Email:
< click here to access email >
Linguistic Field(s): Cognitive Science;
Pragmatics
Meeting Description:
The cognitive turn in linguistics has brought
forth new insights into traditional tropes such
as metaphor and metonymy. As in the case of
metaphor, metonym has come to be seen as a
ubiquitous cognitive phenomenon reflected in
language rather than an occasional witty or
rhetorical process. Unlike the use of metaphor
whose cognitive processing has been extensively
studied from cognitive-pragmatic perspectives
(Carston 2002; Pilkington 2000; Sperber &
Wilson 1986/1995; Wilson 2003), however, that
of metonymy has received relatively less
attention, leaving a lot of important issues in
need of adequate explanation. These issues
mainly include the following: i) In what
context is a (referential) expression
interpreted metonymically? ii) What kind of
pragma-cognitive processes are involved in
assigning the metonymic interpretation? iii)
What is the selective mechanism in cases of
competing candidate metonymic interpretations?
iv) What is the cognitive effect that ensues
from the use of metonymy? v) To what extent are
current models of interpretation pertaining to
metonymy amenable to empirical tests?
This panel will focus on, while not limited to,
these major issues of metonymy research and
seek to speculatively and empirically tackle
the explanatory power of the current
theoretical models, such as Gradient Salience
Hypothesis by Giora (1997, 2003), Relevance
Theory by Sperber and Wilson (1986/1995) and
Wilson and Sperber (2012), and Mental Space
Theory and Blending Theory by Fauconnier (1994)
and Fauconnier and Turner (2002), in hope of
seeking new viable cognitive accounts of
metonymy used in context. A range of
social-cognitive contextual factors such as
lexical knowledge, grammatical knowledge,
familiarity with metonymic usages, knowledge
about the frequency of metonymic usages, genre
knowledge, background assumptions, knowledge of
co-text, and recognition of the current
interactional goal will be explored and tested
to reveal their possible effect on the
interpretation of metonymy, in terms of its
cognitive path, pattern, principle and
predictability.
All the individual studies contributed to this
panel will be conducted on the basis of
authentic data from a variety of sources.
Diverse methodology will be adopted across the
panel, including speculative theorizing,
qualitative analysis, corpus-based analysis,
and various forms of experimental research like
eye tracking survey, ERP study, RP test,
event-related functional magneticresonance
imaging (fMRI) and think-aloud protocol.
Page Updated: 21-Jul-2014