Metonymic Basis of Different Kinds of Conceptual Metaphors (A Criticism of Western Approaches to the Relation of Metonymy and Metaphor through Applying a Cognitive Method)

Among new achievements of cognitive linguistics some have resulted from returning to the concepts of literary traditions, from which one can mention the participation of metaphor, metonymy, and allegory in the process of cognition, and metaphor and metonymy have always had a place of significance. In the history of Western rhetorics the relation between these two was not at issue as they are disconnected in nature. In subsequent eras, they were even regarded as having a confrontational relation. Unlike Western rhetoricians, Muslim rhetoricians have always maintained a close relation between metonymy and metaphor. They considered metaphor as a type of metonymy. In this paper, we are going to show that the metonymic basis of metaphors, as the Muslim rhetoricians believe, is a provable matter of fact. For this purpose and as the first step, we deal with the evolution of approaches towards metonymy and metaphor in Western and Islamic rhetoric history. Then, we will discuss how the confrontation of these two concepts fades as cognitive studies come to work. Still, the cognitivists mostly do not believe that all types of metaphor rise from metonymy, while the Muslim rhetoricians firmly believe that all types of metaphor have a metonymic basis. We are going to show that not only some but all kinds of metaphors have a metonymic basis and all types of conceptual metaphors are constructed upon conceptual metonymy. The theory of Categorization which is one of the most significant ones in cognitive studies has been part of our argumentation framework.