Figures of Speech

219 Pages·2003·1.46 MB·English

by  Christina Alm-Arvius

Christina Alm-Arvius
Figures of Speech
Abstract
The aim of Figures of Speech is to exemplify, analyse and describe the character
and function of both tropes and rhythmical schemes in natural verbal language.
It focuses on the occurrence of figurative language in standard English, but the
theoretical considerations and descriptions presented in this work should be
applicable to verbal languages in general.
A number of different types of tropes and schemes are examined and described.
However, the main part of the study deals with two central categories of tropes:
metaphor and metonymy, including synecdoche, which can be considered a
specific kind of metonymy. An overview of research perspectives and explanatory
models aiming at revealing the character of these tropes is given, although a new
kind of analytical conclusion is argued for. It integrates the construction and use
of tropes into a comprehensive model of semantic variation and dependencies
comprising also non-figurative sense relations.
Metaphorisation is an imaginative generalisation of a source meaning.
A metaphorical extension cancels criterial properties in the source, and the
relation between the source content and a generalised metaphorical reading is
thus similar to that between a more specific hyponym and a superordinate sense
in a hyponymic hierarchy. A metonymic shift builds instead on habitual co-
occurrence of things within a given type of scenario. Accordingly, metonymic
meanings can be compared to the kind of lexical relation called meronymy.
The printing of this book was funded by a grant from the Swedish Research
Council (Vetenskapsrådet).
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Art. No 31249
eISBN 91-44-02491-6
© Christina Alm-Arvius and Studentlitteratur 2003
Printed in Sweden
Studentlitteratur, Lund
Web-address: www.studentlitteratur.se
Printing/year 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 2007 06 05 04 03
‘The best things in life are free’ (Parts of the lyrics of a
popular song by Sylva, Brown and Henderson)
‘… Language is worth a thousand pounds a word.’
(Lewis Carroll 1977, Through the Looking Glass, and
What Alice Found There, p 38)
‘When I make a word do a lot of work like that,’ said
Humpty Dumpty, ‘I always pay it extra.’ (Ibidem, p 75)
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Contents
1 Introduction 9
1.1 Figures of speech and verbal language 9
1.2 More on tropes and types of meaning 19
1.2.1 The basic characteristics of metaphor and
metonymy 19
1.2.2 Semiotics, semantics, and pragmatics 29
1.3 Extended and transferred meanings 31
1.3.1 Figurative extensions 33
1.3.2 Transferred meanings 36
1.3.3 An analytical continuum 41
1.3.4 Dead metaphors and severed metonymies 45
1.4 Schemes 49
2 The Grounding of Meanings in Language 55
2.1 More on non-figurative and figurative meanings 55
2.1.1 The gradient from non-figurative to figurative
meanings 55
2.1.2 Literal meaning and source meaning 64
2.1.3 Literal meaning and concrete meaning 67
2.1.4 Figurative meaning and abstract meaning 71
2.1.5 Three analytical distinctions 75
2.1.6 Conversational implicature and paralinguistic
modulation 76
2.2 Theory and the grounding of language meanings 79
3 More on Metaphor and Related Tropes 87
3.1 Metaphor and semantic theory 87
3.2 Further inquiry into the character of metaphor 90
3.2.1 Metaphor is more than decorative
substitution 90
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3.2.2 I A Richards’s metaphor model and attitudinal
metaphors 92
3.2.3 Can metaphors be rephrased as more explicit
similes? 97
3.2.4 Metaphor and similarity 99
3.2.5 Metaphor and hyponymy 103
3.2.6 Primary or conventional metaphors—and analytic
sentences 110
3.2.7 Internal and external metaphors, and Black’s
interaction view 115
3.2.8 More on cognitive studies and metaphor: thought
complexes and space blends 117
3.2.9 Expanded and mixed metaphors 120
3.2.10 The creative interaction of experience, cognition,
and language senses 122
3.3 Simile 125
3.4 Personification, and the importance of world views 129
3.5 Oxymoron 134
3.6 Hyperbole and understatement 135
3.7 Symbolic language 137
4 Punning 141
4.1 Polysemy in punning 141
4.2 Homonymy in punning 143
4.3 Puns will be language specific 147
4.4 The communicative function of puns 148
4.5 The two meanings in a pun 150
5 Metonymy and Synecdoche 153
5.1 Metonymy and experiential co-occurrence 153
5.1.1 The expansion test and property inheritance 155
5.1.2 Metonymic scenarios 157
5.1.3 Literal senses and metonymic shifts 160
5.1.4 Types of metonymic shortcuts 162
5.2 Synecdoche 163
5.2.1 The general character of synecdoche 163
5.2.2 Denotation and synecdoche 165
5.3 The categorial indeterminacy of some figurative
senses 168
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5.4 Metonymic and synecdochical abbreviations 169
5.5 Metonymy, synecdoche, and meronymy 171
6 Schemes 175
6.1 The general character of schemes 175
6.2 Phonological schemes, onomatopoeia, and sound
symbolism 176
6.3 Parallelism and chiasmus 180
6.4 Schemes and magic 181
6.5 Schemes, pedagogy, and idiomaticity 185
7 Conclusion 189
Appendix 193
References 197
Index 213
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1 Introduction
1 Introduction
1.1 Figures of speech and verbal
language
In the last two decades or so, that is from the 1980s and onwards,
both linguistic semantics and other, related disciplines that deal
with meaning and thinking have seen a steadily increasing interest
in figurative language. More specifically, this interest has centred
on the occurrence of words and formulations that have some kind
of extended or transferred meaning. Tropes is a cover term from
traditional rhetoric for language uses with some kind of secondary
meaning.1 In other words, the meaning of a trope has come about
through some obvious shift from a more basic type of understand-
ing of a language element.
Such non-literal uses are common, and the following two
sentences, (1) and (2), contain examples of quite typical figurative
shifts. For the most part such changes in meaning constitute no
interpretative difficulties at all for proficient speakers of (in this
case) English, either because they are established in the language, or
because it is easy to calculate their intended import within a specific
language context or communicative situation.
(1) I was beginning to reap the benefits of my long daily walks in
the woods.
For instance in the idiomatic construction reap the benefit(s) of some-
thing the meaning of the verb reap has been widened to represent a
more general notion than that evoked by its basic and literal kind of
1 Cf Crystal (2001:116f & 1992:135); Wales (1990:468); Leech & Short
(1981:78f,81f,139–144); Mooij (1976:3,6–7).
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