Towards a Model of Rhetorical Criticism of Metonymy in Chinese Media Texts

Rhetorical criticism is a type of criticism with rhetorical phenomena as its object. In the context of western rhetoric, rhetorical criticism is usually viewed as a method to describe, explain and evaluate certain rhetorical phenomena or act. Metonymy, as a kind of rhetorical device in traditional rhetoric and a cognitive tool in cognitive linguistics, can be regarded as an object for criticism. Accordingly, an analysis of metonymy from the perspective of rhetorical criticism can disclose text builders’ rhetorical motive behind the linguistic use of metonymy. Moreover, it can reveal the ideological meaning of the text (a weak version of ideology) by analyzing and evaluating the terministic screen constructed by the metonymy, to achieve the purpose of rhetorical persuasion and build an “identification” between the addresser and addressee.