Romero, E. and Soria, B.: en prensa, "Novel metonymy and novel metaphor as primary pragmatic processes" en Where Grammar
Meets Discourse. Functional and Cognitive Perspectives.
 

Abstract:

The aim of this paper is to provide the distinctive criteria of novel metonymy and novel metaphor. Marginal as they might be considered by many theoreticians nowadays, we defend that these novel uses of language deserve attention on their own to be distinguished from literal, conventional or textual ones. In this sense, we will show that they share some characteristics, to wit, both have the contextual abnormality as one of their identification criteria and, both are best characterised as utterances requiring a primary pragmatic process for their interpretation, processes that intervene in the production of what is said by means of utterances; thus, a view of novel metaphor and metonymy as implicature, as utterances requiring a secondary pragmatic process, is discarded (Recanati 2003). However, there are very important differences between them. In metonymy, the identification is completed by the realization that there is a veiled restricted nominal element functioning as the notional head of a textually incomplete NP, and, consequently, the primary pragmatic process required for its interpretation is that of recovery of elided elements in order to complete the description which allows reference assignment. Conversely, for the identification of metaphor, a conceptual contrast has to be perceived and a primary pragmatic process of mapping is required for the determination of metaphoric provisional meanings. Indeed, the distinctive criteria of the identification of novel metaphor and metonymy trigger different primary pragmatic processes of interpretation. This position contrasts with the proposals by authors who consider that these two uses are interpreted by the same cognitive process of interpretation (Lakoff and Johnson 1980, and Gibbs 1994).