Metonymic Modelling of Discourse, Discourse Modelling of Metonymy. The Case of the Place-Name Based Metonymies

This paper deals with the way metonymy contributes to the construction and understanding of social objects and of discourses related to them. The analysis is based on an empirical study of place-name based metonymies on the grounds of discourse analysis and cognitive linguistics. It is shown that metonymy lays out referential nets characterized by the variability of anaphora and predicate agreement, as well as by the agglomeration of coreferential units. These nets outline discourse sites and provide both a relevant support for text interpretation and a flexible ground for text progression.