Article In: Metonymic Thinking All the Way Down: From discourse to the lexicon, and beyond
Edited by Carmen Portero-Muñoz, Antonio Barcelona and Almudena Soto Nieto
[Cognitive Linguistic Studies 13:1] 2026
► pp. 47–77
Section 1. Metonymy in discourse
Modeling figuration in speech acts
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
Abstract
The main thrust of the contribution of this study is to demonstrate not only the ubiquity and pervasiveness of
conceptual metonymy and metaphor in producing and understanding illocutionary acts, i.e., speech acts, but also to account for
this observation by explicating the roles of various folk models such as Action, Talk, and Embodiment.
The paper maintains that folk models (i.e., cultural models/cognitive schemas intersubjectively shared by a social
group) impact grammatical structures and usages and, in themselves, constitute a basis for associative and analogical reasoning,
i.e., they give rise to conceptual metonymies and metaphors.
The first part of the paper accounts for indirect speech act data with reference to scenarios constructed
for three types of illocutionary acts: directives, commissives, and expressives. After providing cultural and linguistic evidence
of the psychological validity of the folk model of Action (vs. Talk), an Action Scenario is developed, which forms the basis
of the speech act models. The conceptual structure proposed for Illocutionary Scenarios consists of components termed the Before, Core, Result, and After. All indirect speech acts, we maintain, come about by means of constructing
utterances that instantiate (or refer to) non-Core components of the model, which are exploited metonymically to index a target
(Core) meaning.
In the second part of the paper, we focus on the Core component of commissives, declarations, and expressives as
manifested in utterances expressing bodily movements and acts of transfer and possession. Such “explicit embodied performatives”
rely on a folk model of communication called the Transfer Model of Communication. Interestingly, embodied performatives
are indeed figurative; however, they are not felt to be indirect.
The paper concludes with questions for future research: (i) What kind of pragmatic constraints operate on the
deployment of indirect speech acts? and (ii) Which speech act types are realizable via explicit embodied performatives?
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Indirect speech acts
- 3.Modeling speech acts as bodily movement
- 3.1Performative utterances
- 3.2Embodied declarations
- 3.3Modeling illocutions as acts of giving, making, and extending
- 3.3.1I give you my promise
- 3.3.2I give you my word
- 3.3.3You have my promise
- 3.3.4You have my word
- 3.4Modeling illocutions as acts of making
- 3.5Modeling illocutions as acts of extending
- 4.The issue of cancelability of illocutionary force
- 4.1Indirect speech acts
- 4.2Hedged performatives
- 4.3Embodied speech acts
- 4.4Blending embodied speech acts and hedged performatives
- 4.5“Flouting” Grice’s Manner Maxim “Be brief”?
- 5.Conclusions and desiderata for future research
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
References
References (26)
Barcelona, A. (2015). Metonymy. In E. Dąbrowska & D. Divjak (Eds.), Handbook
of cognitive
linguistics (pp. 143–167). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
(2023). Metonymy-guided
discourse inferencing: A qualitative study. Lublin Studies in Modern Languages and
Literature, 47(2), 11–29.
Depraetere, I., & Kaltenböck, G. (2023). Hedged
performatives in spoken American English: A discourse-oriented analysis. Journal of English
Linguistics, 51(3), 207–235.
Fraser, B. (1975). Hedged
performatives. In P. Cole & J. L. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax
and semantics: Volume 3: Speech
acts (pp. 44–66). New York: Academic Press.
Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic
and conversation. In P. Cole & J. L. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax
and semantics: Volume 3: Speech
acts (pp. 41–58). New York: Academic Press.
von Humboldt, W. (1836). Über die verschiedenheit des menschlichen sprachbaues und ihren einfluss auf die geistige entwickelung des
menschengeschlechts [On the diversity of human language structure and its
influence on the development of human
intelligence]. Berlin: Königliche Akademie der Wissenschaften.
Littlemore, J. (2015). Metonymy:
Hidden shortcuts in language, thought and
communication. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kövecses, Z., & Radden, G. (1998). Metonymy:
Developing a cognitive linguistic view. Cognitive
Linguistics, 9(1), 37–78.
Panther, K.-U. (2016). How
to encode and infer linguistic actions. Chinese Semiotic
Studies, 12(2), 177–214.
(2022). Introduction
to cognitive pragmatics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
(2023). Metaphor
and metonymy in indirect speech acts. In T. F. Li (Ed.), Handbook
of cognitive
semantics (pp. 206–238). Leiden: Brill.
Panther, K.-U., & Radden, G. (2011). Introduction:
Reflections on motivation revisited. In K.-U. Panther & G. Radden (Eds.), Motivation
in grammar and the
lexicon (pp. 1–26). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Panther, K.-U., & Thornburg, L. L. (1998). A
cognitive approach to inferencing in conversation. Journal of
Pragmatics, 30(6), 755–769.
(2003). Metonymies
as natural inference and activation schemas: The case of dependent clauses as independent speech
acts. In K.-U. Panther & L. L. Thornburg (Eds.), Metonymy
and pragmatic
inferencing (pp. 127–147). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
(2012). Antonymy
in language structure and use. In: M. Brdar, I. Raffaelli & M. Žic Fuchs (Eds.), Cognitive
linguistics between universality and
variation (pp. 161–188). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars.
(2019). Figurative
reasoning in hedged performatives. In M. Bolognesi, M. Brdar & K. Despot (Eds.). Metaphor
and metonymy in the digital age: Theory and methods for building repositories of figurative
language (pp. 175–198). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Searle, J. R. (1969). Speech
acts: An essay in the philosophy of
language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
(1975). Indirect
speech acts. In P. Cole & J. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax
and semantics: Volume 3: Speech
acts (pp. 59–82). New York: Academic Press.
(1976). A
classification of illocutionary acts. Language in
Society, 5(1), 1–23. [URL]
(1989). How
performatives work. Linguistics and
philosophy, 12(5), 535–558. [URL]
Searle, J. R., & Vanderveken, D. (1985). Foundations
of illocutionary logic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Thornburg, L. L., & Panther, K.-U. (1997). Speech
act metonymies. In W.-A. Liebert, G. Redeker & L. R. Waugh (Eds.), Discourse
and perspective in cognitive
linguistics (pp. 205–222). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.