On the afternoon ofJune11, 2020, Prof. Zoltán Kövecses, Emeritus Professor atEötvös Loránd University(ELTE), deliveredhisthirdlectureentitled“Metonymy”to School of Foreign Languages via Tencent Meetingand Skype.Hosted by Dr. Yu Lin, over 300 postgraduates and faculty membersenjoyedthe lecture with interest and enthusiasm.
At the beginning of the lecture,Prof.Kövecsesillustratedthedifferences betweenpresuppositionand entailmentas well as the relationship between cognitive linguistics and pragmatics in response to questions of the previous lecture. He also put forwardconstructivesuggestions on how to complete aninnovative research paper according to his own supervision experience. Starting with several classical examples of metonymy,Prof.Kövecses defined metonymy as“a cognitive process in which one conceptual entity (carrier) provides a psychological channel for another within the same domain, framework or idealized cognitive model (ICM)”. Then, Prof. Kövecses distinguished metaphor and metonymy in four dimensions:Similarity vs. Contiguity;Two domains vs. One domain;Understanding vs. Providing mental access;Same realm vs. Different realmsfrom the perspective of cognitive linguistics with vivid figures and schemas. The two ways of metonymy’s occurrences and several relevant concepts such as synecdoche, semiotic triangle and correlation metaphor were also introduced by Prof. Kövecses based on various ICMs.
The lecture, attended by faulty members and graduates from School of Foreign Languages, also attracted theparticipationof hundreds ofscholars, teachers and graduates from domestic universities.Inanutshell,compared with metaphor,Prof.Kövecseselucidated metonymytheorythoroughlyby means of plenty ofinteresting instances and vivid schemas. After the lecture,almost all the audienceexpressed their gratitude to Prof. Kövecses’slecture, and lookedforward tothe next lecture.(Authors: Li Pandeng, Jian Xuemiao)
