Notes 1 Theoretical Framework and Historical Background 1. See the discussion of these parts in Kennedy (1994) and Dixon (1971). 2. To give but four examples: the notion of ‘context’ from anthropology (Malinowsky 1923); from philosophy and speech act theory (Austin 1962); from cooperative principle and the maxims of communication (Grice 1975); from soci- ology, politeness and face (Brown and Levinson 1978). 3. Edwards (1997) argues in this connection that ‘In conversation analysis and dis- cursive psychology, the “loose fit” between descriptions and their referents has to be understood as an essential feature of how language works’ (p. 116). 4. Langacker (1993:29–33) discusses some similar examples regarding metonymy and active zones. 5. See Jakobson’s proposal in his article (1971) and the discussion of this proposal in Chapter 2, section 2.1.1.1. 6. Jakobson observes in this connection that similarity in meaning connects the symbols of a metalanguage with the symbols of the language referred to. Similarity connects a metaphorical term with the term for which it is substituted. Consequently, when constructing a metalanguage to interpret tropes the researcher possesses more homogeneous means to handle metaphor, whereas metonymy, based on a different principle, easily defies interpretation. Therefore, nothing comparable to the rich literature on metaphor can be cited for the theory of metonymy. (1971:95) 7. See Miftäh for a similar attempt to treat both kinäyah and majäz mursal as one phenomenon. In this connection he argues that ‘majäz mursal becomes one special case of kinäyah because both involve a relation between two things’ (1985:114–15). 8. This type of majäz is based on existential relations like totality, partiality, situa- tionality and positionality. These relations obviously pertain to the world of things and objects and not so much to the world of words or concepts. 9. The word used in the Arabic text is ‘kinäyah’ which could be translated as metonymy but I preferred to use the general meaning which is intended in the original text as contrasted to tasrïh, that is explicitness. It should be noted here that the term kinäyah in Arabic is always associated with implicitness – a point that will be elaborated further in the course of this chapter. 10. Al-Mubarrad’s social functions of kinäyah revolve around the social values desig- nated to covering names by means of title ‘kunayah’. It should be noted here that some Arab rhetoricians give examples of what they perceive as kinäyah that are derived totally by means of convention rather than by means of proximity or contiguity. For example, they would interpret the word na‘jah ‘ewe’ which is men- tioned in the Qur’anic verse inna hädhä ’akhi lahu tis‘un wa tis‘ün na‘jatan ‘this man, who is my brother, has ninety-nine ewes’ as ‘woman’. 11. Context here refers to the wider notion of context which is the cultural context as in the case of idioms for example. 184 Notes 185 12. This view is very important in modern treatments of metonymy which consider the trope as comprising two types: one is called referential metonymy and the other predicative metonymy (see Chapter 2, sections 2.1.2.4 and 2.1.2.5, for details of this). 13. Both forms are morphologically possible. 14. Here he means majäz ‘aqlï, because the whole discussion is devoted to this type of majäz and the examples are illustrations of it. 15. ‘Cognitive’ in the sense of rational as delineated in the definition of this type of transfer above. 16. I mean here al-Qazwïni, who showed some sort of systematicity in his discussion of majäz. 17. According to one interpretation, the verse suggests that had the fingers been of equal length, man wouldn’t have been able to perform skillful actions with his hands. 2 Metonymy in Modern Figurative Theory 1. This is perhaps why for quite a long time the paper remained almost unnoticed by linguists or critical theorists. Lodge (1977:73) rightly argues that the paper did not seem very inviting to literary critics because its contents did not sound rele- vant to their concerns. 2. Bansloben (1996:8) argues that ‘critics such as Burke and White consider the two- fold model far too limiting. Instead, they advocate the more traditional four trope approach to rhetoric’. I think Jakobson revolutionised the theory of tropes, and his work benefited the theory of metonymy in particular in many ways. In other words, Jakobson put an end to a long tradition of trope enumeration. He tried to reveal the discursive and signifying power of both metonymy and metaphor. 3. Terms invented by I.A. Richards in his The Philosophy of Rhetoric. Goatly uses ‘topic’ instead of ‘tenor’ and uses the term ‘ground’ (G) (1997). 4. As we have seen in Chapter 1, this is the name Rosiene uses for an unknown ancient Latin rhetorician to whom Rhetorica ad Herennium is credited. Sometimes the treatise is ascribed to Cicero and as a result the author is sometimes referred to using the name Cicero, and followed by in square brackets ‘the Auctor’. This is the way the author is referred to in the bibliography of this book. 5. In semiotics and semantics, the term ‘seme’ as Wales asserts is ‘from Greek sema “sign”, and by analogy with PHONEME and MORPHEME, seme is used in European STRUCTURALISM and semantics (e.g. Greimas 1966; Coseriu 1967) to describe a minimal DISTINCTIVE FEATURE of meaning or COMPONENT.’ Semes define the essential denotations of different lexical items within a lexical field in terms of binary oppositions: e.g. items of clothing can be marked as being ‘with [ϩ] or without [Ϫ] sleeves’ (e.g. jacket vs. waistcoat) (Wales 1989:415). 6. On p. 109 the Groupe maintain that to construct a metaphor, we must couple two complementary synecdoches that function in a precisely inverse way and that fix an intersection between the terms S and R. 7. This is the symbol the Groupe use to designate the ‘semantic plane’. 8. This is the symbol the Groupe use to designate the ‘material plane’. 9. Osterwalder cites George S. Klein, who has labelled two basic attitudes – levelling and sharpening. The former ‘tends towards the obliteration of differences to facil- itate categorisation’ while the latter ‘is a tendency to be hypersensitive to minu- tiae, to respond excessively to fine nuances and small differences’ (1978:17). 10. This is of course indicative of a cyclical metonymic signification process which begins with the cloth moving to the desk and then to the whole office. 186 Notes 11. This situation is usually referred in sociolinguistic studies as ‘diglossia’. The first occurrence of the term ‘diglossia’, according to Hary (1993), was by Krumbacher in the very earliest years of the twentieth century, in which the author discussed both Greek and Arabic diglossia. Charles Ferguson reintroduced the term in his influential paper bearing the name ‘Diglossia’ as its title. He defines ‘diglossia’ as ‘a relatively stable language situation in which, in addition to the primary dialects of the language (which may include a standard or regional standards), there is a very divergent, highly codified (often grammatically more complex) superposed variety, the vehicle of a large and respected body of written literature, either of an earlier period or in another speech community, which is learned largely by for- mal education and is used for most written and formal spoken purposes but is not used by any sector of the community for ordinary conversation’ (1964:435). 12. See for these terms Fauconnier (1985:3–34). 13. I am using the term ‘indexical’ in a semiotic sense. See the discussion of this point in the next chapter, section 3.4.2. 14. The notion of schema is developed in Chapter 5 to account for the role of metonymy as a process of schematic coherence in text. 15. I think the reason for this is that there is a shift in theoretical perspectives in which modern accounts of tropes tend to be more intellectually driven to find out gen- eral rules and principles governing the cognitive processes involved in both of these two tropes. This focus is obviously different from that which is characteris- tic of traditional accounts of the tropes and which aims to provide taxonomies of figures and strives to enumerate types, examples and species without actually pro- viding general principles. See for further discussion on this Cooper (1986:12–20). 16. See the interesting discussion of the pragmatic aspects of tautologies in Wierzbicka (1991:392–452). 17. Panther and Thornburg (1999) treat this type of metonymy as potential for actual. 18. Here ‘functional’ has no terminological load. It refers to the fact that Gibbs is more interested in the function of metonymy in discourse. 19. Compare also ‘Nixon, who was a staunch anti-communist, bombed Hanoi almost immediately after taking office,’ which is surely predicative. 3 Metonymy and Semiotics 1. Keller (1998:47) coins this term to refer to Plato’s mystery of how is it possible ‘when I utter this sound, [and] I have that thing in mind … [that] you know that I have it in mind’? 2. In this connection, Fiske and Hartley maintain that ‘the central concerns of semi- otics … are: … the relationship between a sign and its meaning; and the way signs are combined into codes’ (1978:37). 3. For a good survey of this vastness see Eco (1976:9–14), who refers to the numer- ous areas that are related in some way or another to the semiotic field as the polit- ical boundaries. 4. It should be noted that even in linguistics the level of substance is usually regarded as to fall outside the scope of linguistics.