This chapter analyses data in our metonymy database. Metonymic triggers are the contextual factors that prompt the operation of a conceptual metonymy. They can be co-textual, like the immediate lexicogrammatical co-text (ict), or not co-textual, like frames. The results of the analysis show that the ict triggers active (act) metonymies that in turn prompt readings qualified by frames, as in the example To think that the same petticoats should come between two of my boys!, where the ict does not prompt strongly enough the reading of petticoats as “petticoat wearers” and an “act” metonymy triggers the frame in turn prompting that reading. Direct prompting by the ict of the intended reading (the motivating metonymy then remaining “dormant”) is also frequent. Both situations occur with constructions (lexical or syntactic). The comprehension of indirect speech acts and implicatures is normally guided by act metonymies whose main triggers are not co-textual but strictly cognitive.

This chapter investigates the diachronic semantic development of denominal verbs derived from English nouns referring to internal organs, focusing on the cognitive mechanisms underlying these morphological processes. Drawing on data from the history of English, the study demonstrates the central role of metonymy in verb formation, particularly through the patterns patient for action and instrument for action. Additionally, the analysis identifies complex metaphtonymic interactions, whereby metaphorically conceived containers of emotion are metonymically extended to encode actions or experiences. These findings illustrate how cultural conceptualizations of the body interact with embodied experience and linguistic creativity. Metaphtonymy emerges as a powerful explanatory framework for both the historical durability and semantic richness of certain verbs, additionally suggesting directions for cross-linguistic research on body-based verb formation.

A particular subset of lexical quantifiers in English involves derived nouns ending in -ful, such as handful and spoonful. The suffix -ful transforms these base words into quantifiers that specify an amount related to the base noun, such as a handful of seeds or a spoonful of sugar. The aim of this study is twofold. First, the derivational process involved is regarded as triggered by a metonymic association whereby a quantity is accessed via different types of containers. The second aim is to examine the development in the current usage of these quantifiers by examining corpus data. Through this analysis, I hope to fill a gap in the existing research on English lexical quantifiers in -ful and their evolution

This study examines Chinese food metaphors to reveal their cultural values and cognitive patterns. By analyzing a diverse corpus, this study explores how food metaphors function in emotional expression, social bonding, moral value transmission, identity formation, and cultural symbolism. Expressions like chī cù (吃醋, “eat vinegar”) metaphorically represent jealousy, linking the “sourness” of vinegar with the emotional experience of jealousy. Socially, the phrase chī fàn (吃饭, “eat a meal”) is often used to signify the deepening of friendships and the building of social ties. Metaphorical food naming, such as longan (龙眼, “dragon eye”) not only serves as a descriptive metaphor but also conveys auspicious meanings, reflecting a desire for positive outcomes. This study provides insights into the connection between metaphor, cognition, and cultural understanding.

Within studies on the interaction between metonymy and metaphor, little cross-cultural research has examined metaphors arising from metonymies. This paper compares the development of the metaphorical meaning ‘youth’ shared by green and its Chinese counterpart qing, by diachronically investigating green and qing in four historical periods of English and Chinese using historical corpora.

The results show that green and qing have the connotation of youth of plants etymologically, which develops into the metaphorical meaning ‘youth’ in a process that moves from metonymy to metaphor. The similarity is driven by potential universal patterns in metaphorical conceptualization, which motivate the same connotation (youth) of the same metonymic bases (plants) and the same metaphorical mapping. Culturally motivated patterns also work in the process.

In political journalism, capital cities often represent administrations through the capital for government metonymy. This metonymy is more prominent for countries seen as allies or threats, and less for neutral governments. However, it remains unclear whether the capital for government metonymy shifts over time, particularly with changes in political leadership. To address this, the chapter analyzes how capital cities the American public perceives as threats (Beijing, Moscow, Tehran, Pyongyang) and allies (London, Ottawa, Tel Aviv, Brussels) were represented on CNN and Fox News during the first two years of the Trump and Biden administrations. The findings show that metonymic representation was more frequent for threats than allies, regardless of presidential agenda or media outlet, likely due to sensationalist reporting in American media.

In this chapter we study metonymies as they interact in discourse, expanding on the framework developed in Brdar-Szabó & Brdar (2011) and Brdar & Brdar-Szabó (2025), and focusing on what metonymic chains reveal about the nature of metonymy. Our main goal is to demonstrate that metonymic chains are different from metaphoric chains with respect to the dynamicity vs. the constancy meaning of the chained elements. While the meaning of metaphors in a chain tends to remain constant as the chain evolves, the situation with textual metonymic chains is very different: the meaning of these metonymies is dynamically construed and often fluctuates, oscillates, or keeps picking up new elements as the chain develops, as demonstrated on three case studies.

The focus of this study is on the top-down influence of migration experts and refugee protection institutions on migration discourse in the public sphere in Croatia. The aim of this study is to examine the euphemistic effect of the metaphor’s degree of schematicity (Clausner & Croft, 1997), in this case of the migration domain, as a schematic representation of motion instigated by the generic for specific metonymy. A comparison is made between the data set from our previous research on migration discourse (Gradečak et al., 2021) with the data elicited form the MaCoCu corpus of Croatian. The secondary research goal was to observe the use of the English construction as it was adopted in the Croatian expert discourse and the media and compare them to the use of the constructions with water as the source domain.

The score from Casablanca, particularly the recurring but never fully played “As time goes by,” is analysed from a cognitive perspective. We discuss how meaning emerges from the interaction of musical and visual components. The music transforms across scenes, symbolizing evolving feelings. We propose a central metaphor: changes in emotions are changes in sounds, supported by subordinate metaphors such as joy and hope are major keys and pain and uncertainty are minor keys. Our analysis shows how visual and musical elements work together to evoke emotional responses, emphasizing the role of sound in shaping narrative meaning.

The coronavirus has been portrayed figuratively by means of metaphors and metonymies, often combined with hyperbole and/or irony, giving rise to complex combinations of these figures of thought. The present article focuses on the combinations involved in a highly recurrent image used to address COVID-related issues: the lifting of the American flag by marines on Iwo Jima. Through visual intertextuality links are created to topics ranging from the morale-boosting representation of professionals holding the healthcare system together to the criticism of Trump’s misuse of the pandemic to avert impeachment. In ironic uses of this image, the target and source domains of the visual metaphor are built through the integration of conceptual structure, and the metaphor provides the epistemic and attested scenarios.

This chapter analyses data in our metonymy database. Metonymic triggers are the contextual factors that prompt the operation of a conceptual metonymy. They can be co-textual, like the immediate lexicogrammatical co-text (ict), or not co-textual, like frames. The results of the analysis show that the ict triggers active (act) metonymies that in turn prompt readings qualified by frames, as in the example To think that the same petticoats should come between two of my boys!, where the ict does not prompt strongly enough the reading of petticoats as “petticoat wearers” and an “act” metonymy triggers the frame in turn prompting that reading. Direct prompting by the ict of the intended reading (the motivating metonymy then remaining “dormant”) is also frequent. Both situations occur with constructions (lexical or syntactic). The comprehension of indirect speech acts and implicatures is normally guided by act metonymies whose main triggers are not co-textual but strictly cognitive.

This chapter investigates the diachronic semantic development of denominal verbs derived from English nouns referring to internal organs, focusing on the cognitive mechanisms underlying these morphological processes. Drawing on data from the history of English, the study demonstrates the central role of metonymy in verb formation, particularly through the patterns patient for action and instrument for action. Additionally, the analysis identifies complex metaphtonymic interactions, whereby metaphorically conceived containers of emotion are metonymically extended to encode actions or experiences. These findings illustrate how cultural conceptualizations of the body interact with embodied experience and linguistic creativity. Metaphtonymy emerges as a powerful explanatory framework for both the historical durability and semantic richness of certain verbs, additionally suggesting directions for cross-linguistic research on body-based verb formation.

A particular subset of lexical quantifiers in English involves derived nouns ending in -ful, such as handful and spoonful. The suffix -ful transforms these base words into quantifiers that specify an amount related to the base noun, such as a handful of seeds or a spoonful of sugar. The aim of this study is twofold. First, the derivational process involved is regarded as triggered by a metonymic association whereby a quantity is accessed via different types of containers. The second aim is to examine the development in the current usage of these quantifiers by examining corpus data. Through this analysis, I hope to fill a gap in the existing research on English lexical quantifiers in -ful and their evolution

This study examines Chinese food metaphors to reveal their cultural values and cognitive patterns. By analyzing a diverse corpus, this study explores how food metaphors function in emotional expression, social bonding, moral value transmission, identity formation, and cultural symbolism. Expressions like chī cù (吃醋, “eat vinegar”) metaphorically represent jealousy, linking the “sourness” of vinegar with the emotional experience of jealousy. Socially, the phrase chī fàn (吃饭, “eat a meal”) is often used to signify the deepening of friendships and the building of social ties. Metaphorical food naming, such as longan (龙眼, “dragon eye”) not only serves as a descriptive metaphor but also conveys auspicious meanings, reflecting a desire for positive outcomes. This study provides insights into the connection between metaphor, cognition, and cultural understanding.

Within studies on the interaction between metonymy and metaphor, little cross-cultural research has examined metaphors arising from metonymies. This paper compares the development of the metaphorical meaning ‘youth’ shared by green and its Chinese counterpart qing, by diachronically investigating green and qing in four historical periods of English and Chinese using historical corpora.

The results show that green and qing have the connotation of youth of plants etymologically, which develops into the metaphorical meaning ‘youth’ in a process that moves from metonymy to metaphor. The similarity is driven by potential universal patterns in metaphorical conceptualization, which motivate the same connotation (youth) of the same metonymic bases (plants) and the same metaphorical mapping. Culturally motivated patterns also work in the process.

In political journalism, capital cities often represent administrations through the capital for government metonymy. This metonymy is more prominent for countries seen as allies or threats, and less for neutral governments. However, it remains unclear whether the capital for government metonymy shifts over time, particularly with changes in political leadership. To address this, the chapter analyzes how capital cities the American public perceives as threats (Beijing, Moscow, Tehran, Pyongyang) and allies (London, Ottawa, Tel Aviv, Brussels) were represented on CNN and Fox News during the first two years of the Trump and Biden administrations. The findings show that metonymic representation was more frequent for threats than allies, regardless of presidential agenda or media outlet, likely due to sensationalist reporting in American media.

In this chapter we study metonymies as they interact in discourse, expanding on the framework developed in Brdar-Szabó & Brdar (2011) and Brdar & Brdar-Szabó (2025), and focusing on what metonymic chains reveal about the nature of metonymy. Our main goal is to demonstrate that metonymic chains are different from metaphoric chains with respect to the dynamicity vs. the constancy meaning of the chained elements. While the meaning of metaphors in a chain tends to remain constant as the chain evolves, the situation with textual metonymic chains is very different: the meaning of these metonymies is dynamically construed and often fluctuates, oscillates, or keeps picking up new elements as the chain develops, as demonstrated on three case studies.

The focus of this study is on the top-down influence of migration experts and refugee protection institutions on migration discourse in the public sphere in Croatia. The aim of this study is to examine the euphemistic effect of the metaphor’s degree of schematicity (Clausner & Croft, 1997), in this case of the migration domain, as a schematic representation of motion instigated by the generic for specific metonymy. A comparison is made between the data set from our previous research on migration discourse (Gradečak et al., 2021) with the data elicited form the MaCoCu corpus of Croatian. The secondary research goal was to observe the use of the English construction as it was adopted in the Croatian expert discourse and the media and compare them to the use of the constructions with water as the source domain.

The score from Casablanca, particularly the recurring but never fully played “As time goes by,” is analysed from a cognitive perspective. We discuss how meaning emerges from the interaction of musical and visual components. The music transforms across scenes, symbolizing evolving feelings. We propose a central metaphor: changes in emotions are changes in sounds, supported by subordinate metaphors such as joy and hope are major keys and pain and uncertainty are minor keys. Our analysis shows how visual and musical elements work together to evoke emotional responses, emphasizing the role of sound in shaping narrative meaning.

The coronavirus has been portrayed figuratively by means of metaphors and metonymies, often combined with hyperbole and/or irony, giving rise to complex combinations of these figures of thought. The present article focuses on the combinations involved in a highly recurrent image used to address COVID-related issues: the lifting of the American flag by marines on Iwo Jima. Through visual intertextuality links are created to topics ranging from the morale-boosting representation of professionals holding the healthcare system together to the criticism of Trump’s misuse of the pandemic to avert impeachment. In ironic uses of this image, the target and source domains of the visual metaphor are built through the integration of conceptual structure, and the metaphor provides the epistemic and attested scenarios.