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Figurative Language – Intersubjectivity and Usage
Edited by Augusto Soares da Silva
[Figurative Thought and Language 11] 2021
► pp. 175–212

Metonymic indeterminacy and metalepsis

Getting two (or more) targets for the price of one vehicle

| ELTE Budapest
| University of Osijek

Given appropriate context, indeterminacy may arise when a metonymic vehicle, i.e. the source, can be simultaneously linked to more than one metonymic target. We claim that this situation, akin to the phenomenon of metalepsis or transgression in narratology, is not rare, but quite usual, and even regular in certain contexts. This may lead to an increase of a second-order type of anisomorphy, but ultimately leaves space for dynamic meaning construal and optimizes texts coherence. In order to accommodate metalepsis, we argue for an approach to metonymy not based on mappings but on the activation of the source conceptual cluster opening a mental space dynamically expanded or reduced so as to fit the conceptual frame provided by the co(n)text of use.

Keywords: metonymy, metalepsis, indeterminacy, complex metonymy, metonymic chain, metonymic target, metonymic source, mental space
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Metonymic interaction: Chains and tiers
  • 3.Metonymic indeterminacy
    • 3.1Sylleptic and complementary metonymies
    • 3.2Metonymy and metalepsis
      • 3.2.1Some more cases of metonymic indeterminacy
      • 3.2.2Metalepsis
    • 3.3Multiple metonymic targets
      • 3.3.1Getting two or more targets for the price of one (vehicle)
      • 3.3.2Multiple metonymic targets: So what?
  • 4.Recapitulation and concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 19 May 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ftl.11.06brd
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