Metonymic and metaphoric language are thoroughly present in everyday
language, so much so that they hold in themselves strong explanatory capacity to
uncover and even influence underlying individual or social/cultural ideological
systems and beliefs about the world around us (Catalano & Waugh, 2013; 2014;
Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). The mapping systems involved in both metonymy and
metaphor provide access to conceptual and social heuristics that help us make
inferential and referential shortcuts (Littlemore, 2015), and thus these figurative
constructs are directly implicated as “natural inference schemas” that we engage
in the construction of meaning through written discourse (Panther & Thornburg,
2003). Further, these heuristics are environmental, social, and cognitively
appointed forces that shape how we understand things and how we work out
abstract concepts and how we reason and shape the world around us. Because of
this, metonymy and metaphor are crucial foci for any inquiry into how our
individual or systemic perceptions, attitudes, beliefs, and thought processes
(Catalano & Waugh, 2014, p. 407) are revealed through the written discourses in
our world.
But, while conceptual metaphor has enjoyed a great deal of attention over
the last several decades, research into what metonymy can reveal as a potent
participant in social and cognitive meaning-making has been comparatively
scarce—a notion that is especially disconcerting given strong recent evidence to
suggest that metonymy conceptually “leads the way” to metaphor (Mittelberg &
Waugh, 2009). Inspired by this, this dissertation project seeks reparation for
metonymy’s relative neglect as an effective tool for critical discourse analysts.
Through an exploration of metonymy’s critical relationship to online discourse,
internationalization in higher education, and language policy and planning, the
three studies that comprise this project seek to engage the “explanatory and
practical aims” of critical discourse analysis and to support the tireless work of such
analysis that attempts “to uncover, reveal or disclose what is implicit, hidden or
otherwise not immediately obvious in relationships of discursively enacted
dominance [and] their underlying ideologies” (van Dijk, 1995).
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:arizona.edu/oai:arizona.openrepository.com:10150/626665 |
| Date | January 2018 |
| Creators | Kohler, Alan Thomas, Kohler, Alan Thomas |
| Contributors | Waugh, Linda, Tardy, Christine, Waugh, Linda, Tardy, Christine, Gilmore, Perry |
| Publisher | The University of Arizona. |
| Source Sets | University of Arizona |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text, Electronic Dissertation |
| Rights | Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. |
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