Although Br´eal distinguished between metaphor and association (metonymy), and many others have done so since, e.g. Jakobson and Halle (1971), the distinction has often been eroded. For example, Hock and Joseph say that metaphor is “the major vehicle through which words acquire new or broader mean- ings” (1996: 228), and include within it part-for-whole synecdoche (e.g. use of hand for laborer), metonymy (association, e.g. use of bar [the physical barrier between lawyer and jury] for the legal profession),12hyperbole (exaggeration, e.g. use of
awfully as an intensifier), litotes (understatement, e.g. use of a bit for rather), and
euphemism (e.g. pass on for die). Within Cognitive Linguistics, metaphor took pride of place in the 1980s, even though Lakoff and Johnson (1980) and Lakoff (1987) emphasized the importance of certain types of metonymy, for example the use of a well-known (often salient) aspect of something to stand for the whole, e.g.
Washington “(a place for) government.”
Until recently, metonymy was thought of largely in terms of idiosyncratic usages with external referents, such as White House for President of the USA, or elliptic, such as a Picasso for a painting by Picasso, although as was mentioned in 1.3.1, there has in recent years been a fundamental shift in thinking, most espe- cially in Cognitive Linguistics (see Barcelona 2000a and papers therein, especially Barcelona 2000b, Radden 2000). Among factors that led to this shift was synchronic work on frame semantics; research exemplified by Fillmore (1982) and Lehrer and Kittay (1992) suggested that there are “frame metonymies,” in which components of the frame are parts of the whole. For example, in a restaurant frame customers and food are part of the whole; thus the well-known metonymy The ham sandwich
wants a second glass of coke (Nunberg 1978) involves not just a metonymy from
the person who ordered the sandwich to the sandwich, but to the whole restau- rant scene and to our mental model of it (Sweetser and Fauconnier 1996). The same may be said for the well-known example in Japanese linguistics Watasi wa
unagi da, which is structurally “I am (an) eel” but in a restaurant context means
“I’d like (the) eel.” Of metonymy Langacker has said that its “prevalence would be hard to exaggerate” (Langacker 1995: 28). Indeed, it is fundamental to reference: 12Note that Hock and Joseph distinguish synecdoche and metonymy, although the former is often
“In metonymy, an expression’s usual referent (i.e. its profile) is invoked as a reference point to establish mental contact with its intended referent (its target)” (ibid.), for example:
(17) She bought Lakoff and Johnson, used and in paper, for just $1.50.
(Langacker 1995: 28; boldface original) Here Lakoff and Johnson is a salient reference point, metonymically establishing mental contact with the book rather than its authors. Similarly, Croft (1993: 354) writes of metonymy as “the highlighting of an aspect of a concept’s profile” in a larger domain or frame.
Likewise in historical work, the focus on metonymy in an extended sense came to be of increasing importance. Attempts were made to establish functional differences between metaphor and metonymy/association. From this perspective, metaphor in- volves similarity, mapping of one domain onto another, in what is essentially a con- ceptual mode of analogy, paradigmatic choice, and iconicity. By contrast, metonymy involves contiguity, syntagmatic relations, and indexicality, and shifts within the same domain (Anttila 1989 [1972],13Traugott 1988). But as mentioned in 1.3.1,
what exactly a “domain” is, or where the locus of change occurs has not always been so clear. Is intensity of speed within the same semantic domain as aspectual phase, or in a different one (see Stern’s example of RAPIDLY> IMMEDIATELY (see section 2.2.2))? It would be possible to think in terms of domain transfer and metaphor here: a mapping from the sociophysical world of description (in a rapid manner) to that of temporal deixis, shifting according to the subjective view-point of the speaker (within a time-period proximate to a point of reference, as subjec- tively construed by the speaker). However, Stern treated the shift as permutation (phrasal association, therefore metonymy), invoking as he did changes in the con- text of process vs. punctual verbs. Metaphor and metonymy involve different axes but they interact; Goossens has coined the term “metaphtonomy” as a reminder of this interaction (see e.g. 1995a).
In addition to semantic work, especially in Cognitive Linguistics, other lines of work in the pragmatics of presuppositions, implicatures, and inferences, combined with close textual study inspired by discourse analysis, and enabled by the devel- opment of computerized corpora, suggested a way to reconceptualize metonymy as a major language-internal force in semantic change.
Some brief and hesitant hypotheses were mentioned in 1.3.2, such as Bolinger’s (1971) insight that inferences can become references. Proposals in the same vein included Cole’s, in connection with the development of let’s from let us, that con- versational meanings “not inherent in the logical structure” of the sentence in which 13Anttila acknowledges Guiraud (1955).
they occur can come via frequent use to acquire “literal meaning” (1975: 273), and Grice’s tentative “it may not be impossible for what starts life, so to speak, as a conversational implicature to become conventionalized” (1989 [1975]: 58). The diachronic shift from conversational to conventional implicature was followed through in some detail in Brown and Levinson (1987 [1978]) and Levinson fur- ther proposed that “it is possible to argue that there is a sequence from particular- ized through generalized conversational implicatures to conventional implicatures” (1979: 216). But probably the most influential work, at least in Traugott’s thinking, was a brief paper by Geis and Zwicky (1971) on the “invited inferences” involved in conditional perfection, or the tendency for promises like I’ll give you $5 if you mow the lawn to be understood as If and only if you mow the lawn will I give you
$5. In the context of their paper they mention the development of causal since out
of temporal since, saying:
it seems to be the case that an invited inference can, historically, become part of semantic representation in the strict sense; thus, the development of the English conjunction since from a purely temporal word to a marker of causation can be interpreted as a change from a principle of invited inference associated with since (by virtue of its temporal meaning) to a piece of the semantic content of since.
(Geis and Zwicky 1971: 565–566) Geis and Zwicky distinguish invited inferences from Gricean conversational impli- catures, commenting that Grice’s “Relevance” principle does not seem to provide any obvious account of the inference from temporality to causality. However, Grice’s Quantity 2 principle (understood as the R-heuristic “Say no more than you must, and mean more thereby,” see 1.2.3) combined with the view espoused here of strate- gic, rhetorical language use, motivates this development: in specifying temporality, SP/W may imply a subjective assessment of connectivity richer than pure tempo- rality.
Focus of attention on the pragmatic meanings that arise in language use opened the way for thinking about “conceptual,” language-internal metonymy arising out of the syntagmatic contexts of language use, association, contiguity, and indexicality.14 Metonymy in its extended conceptual sense came to be seen as a powerful alternative to metaphor, in fact as the key to conceptualizing semantic change in context.
When we look at changes that have been designated as metaphorical, the “metaphor” often appears to be primarily a function of the fact that we are looking at lexical entries in their “before” and “after” stages, and out of context. Consider,
14However, see Warren (1998) for an attempt to distinguish “inference” and “implication” from metonymy.
for example, the extension of WHITE> INNOCENT, SPACE > TIME, or of ape > “brutish person.” As soon as we think about change in terms of its syntactic and ul- timately discourse contexts, associations arising out of the context can be construed as playing a major role in change (see e.g. Brinton 1988: chapter 5, Traugott 1988). Already extant metaphors that themselves have arisen out of the patterns of lan- guage use at earlier times are construed as templates, or mental models constraining the kinds of invited inferences that become salient, and in many cases the outcome of changes arising by semanticization of GIINs (see 1.3, 1.4).15Furthermore, the
fine-grained “paths” of change can begin to be elucidated, without the need to seek evidence for discrete cross-boundary leaps. The remarkably high incidence of re- dundancy or at least semantic harmony in the contexts of semantic change can be seen as the textual locus of experimentation by SP/W with the possibilities of invited inferencing. And, most importantly, subjectification can be understood as a type of metonymy – association with SP/W in the strategic course of speaking/writing. We will, however, leave discussion of subjectification to the last section, after a brief survey of issues in the study of grammaticalization and the hypothesis of unidi- rectionality, since the understanding that subjectification is a major mechanism of change developed largely in the context of work on these issues.