Interpretation of Metonomy from Relevance Theory

Metonymy is a way of thinking used widely in people's daily life and an important means for people to know the world and enrich the language.From the perspective of Relevance Theory,combining cognitive factors with pragmatics in communication,this paper makes a detailed analysis of metonymy.Metonymy can make both sides of communication try to seek relevance,sending and understanding the relevant information;metonymy can achieve optimal relevance by balancing the relationship between contextual effects and processing effort;the working mechanism of metonymy can be accounted for reasonably by Relevance Theory.This paper intends to help people understand metonymy more comprehensively.