THE APPLICATION OF METONYMIC COGNITIVE MECHANISM TO CONSTRUCT NON-BODY PART MEANINGS USING BODY PARTS WORDS: A CASE STUDY OF “/HǓA/” AND “/MƜ:/” IN THAI

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Teavakorn Khumsat
Xinhui Lu

Abstract

Body parts are a conceptually rich domain, and are often used as the source domain for conceptualizing other conceptual domain, i.e. conceptualization. However, it is not arbitrary for the conceptualizer to use body parts as the source domain of conceptualization to conceptualize the other concepts. It needs to be carried out under the operation of cognitive mechanisms such as metaphor and metonymy. Among them, the metonymic cognitive mechanism plays an important role in the conceptualization no less than metaphor. Based on the viewpoint of cognitive linguistics, semantic structure is equivalent to conceptual structure, this paper analyzes the meaning extension of body part term “/hǔa/ (head)” and “/mɯ:/ (hand)” in the Thai language corpus to indirectly investigate the use of metonymic cognitive mechanism by Thai native speakers in the process of using body parts to conceptualize other non-body parts. The study found
that Thai native speakers used three types of metonymic cognitive models in the process of using body parts “head” and “hands” to conceptualize other concepts based on metonymic cognitive mechanisms, namely, THE PART FOR THE WHOLE, THE WHOLE FOR THE PART, A PART FOR ANTHER PART, and found that the body parts “head” is more prominent that “hands”.

Article Details

How to Cite
Khumsat, T., & Lu, X. (2022). THE APPLICATION OF METONYMIC COGNITIVE MECHANISM TO CONSTRUCT NON-BODY PART MEANINGS USING BODY PARTS WORDS: A CASE STUDY OF “/HǓA/” AND “/MƜ:/” IN THAI. Chinese Journal of Social Science and Management, 6(2), 178–190. Retrieved from https://so01.tci-thaijo.org/index.php/CJSSM/article/view/248682
Section
Academic Articles

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