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Article published In: Concepts and Context in Relevance-Theoretic Pragmatics: New Developments
Edited by Agnieszka Piskorska and Manuel Padilla Cruz
[Pragmatics 33:3] 2023
► pp. 368–392

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Non-literal uses of proper names in XYZ constructions

A relevance theory perspective

ORCiD logo with link | University of Warsaw
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.
Published online: 24 February 2023
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https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.21070.wal
Abstract
The paper focuses on non-literal uses of proper names in XYZ constructions, such as the use of the personal name Donald Trump in Boris Johnson is the Donald Trump of UK politics or ‘5G’ is the Donald Trump of telecom, and argues that such uses can be best accounted for by relevance theory. While in their primary use, proper names uniquely denote specific individuals and have no meaning on their own, in their secondary uses, they act as common nouns, capable of conveying non-literal meanings. In relevance theory, such non-literal uses can be explained in terms of lexical modulation or ad hoc concept formation. The analysis of selected examples shows that while some of the XYZ constructions can be seen as metaphors, others are better described as category extensions, and it substantiates the relevance-theoretic claim that there is no clear cut-off point between the two varieties of loose use.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Some issues concerning proper names
    • 2.1Formal aspects of proper names
    • 2.2The semantics of proper names in relevance theory
    • 2.3Secondary uses of proper names
  • 3.Non-literal uses of proper names in relevance theory
    • 3.1Lexical modulation
    • 3.2Category extension
  • 4.Non-literal uses of proper names in XYZ constructions
    • 4.1The XYZ construction
    • 4.2Proper names in XYZ constructions
    • 4.3An overview of approaches to the XYZ construction
    • 4.4Category extension or metaphor? A relevance-theoretic analysis of non-literal uses of proper names in the XYZ construction
  • 5.Concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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