Metaphor and Metonymy in Comparison and Contrast (review)

This remarkable collection of papers reports within one single volume the past, present, and possible future of metonymy and metaphor research. It contains seventeen important papers grouped under four sections, fifteen of ‘which are already published, but less accessible or heavily revised’ (1). Most of the articles are contributed by leading, productive, and visible experts in their areas. Thus, this collection of papers, otherwise difficult to come by, is a very important contribution to the study of metaphor and metonymy. In addition, ‘so many internal cross-references’ (v) make the volume a coherent and consistent account.

Section 1, which comes after a detailed, 38-page introduction by René Dirven, more or less follows Roman Jakobson’s line of thinking (‘The metaphoric and metonymic poles’, a then-brief but now-seminal contribution). Renate Bartsch shows that metonymy and metaphor are different ‘as two ways of construing new concepts from old concepts’ (73). One of my comments on Dirven’s paper is that metonymy and metaphor are not necessarily ‘mental strategies of conceptualization’ simply because we most often use metonymy or metaphor unconsciously instead of strategically. And I would subscribe to the view that language is ultimately figurative language primarily because human thinking is ultimately figurative thinking! In the last paper in Section 1, Beatrice Warren attempts to provide ‘An alternative account of the interpretation of referential metonymy and metaphor’.

The four chapters in Section 2 deal with a ‘two-domain approach’ to metaphor and metonymy. Zoltán Kövecses, Gary B. Palmer, and René Dirven discuss emotion and language while William Croft argues for a single domain in the interpretation of some particular grammatical constructions. For Antonio Barcelona, misunderstandings about the notions of metaphor and metonymy need to be clarified before a clear methodology can be worked out, whereas Klaus-Uwe Panther and Linda L. Thornburg demonstrate that conceptual metaphor and metonymy can account for the high productivity of English -er nominals.

Section 3 is devoted to the interaction between metaphor and metonymy with contributions by John R. Taylor (‘Category extension by metonymy and metaphor’), Louis Goossens (‘Metaphtonymy: The interaction of metaphor and metonymy in expressions for linguistic action’), Nick Riemer (‘When is a metonymy no longer a metonymy?’), Günter Radden (‘How metonymic are metaphors?’), and Dirk Geeraerts (‘The interaction of metaphor and metonymy in composite expressions’).

Section 4 touches upon recent progress made in the study of metaphor and metonymy. Mark Turner and Gilles Fauconnier’s introduction of the notion of conceptual integration into metonymy and metaphor study has certainly opened up new research areas. Francisco José Ruiz deMendoza Ibáñez and Olga Isabel Díez Velasco explore ‘Patterns of conceptual interaction’, while Joseph Grady and Christopher Johnson present ‘Converging evidence for the notions of subscene and primary scene’. The concluding chapter, about the past and the present of blending, is co-authored by Brigitte Nerlich and David D. Clarke.

This volume should be a valuable key reference for anyone intending to delve into the study of metonymy and metaphor.