Conceptualization and Metonymy: Cognitive Mechanisms of Meaning Construction in Language

Abstract

This paper examines how conceptualization and metonymy jointly underpin meaning construction in language within the framework of Cognitive Linguistics. Conceptualization is treated as the dynamic, construal-based, and embodied process through which linguistic expressions prompt mental representations, while metonymy is argued to be a domain-internal access operation that provides cognitively economical routes to complex conceptual structures. Integrating insights from Cognitive Grammar, Frame Semantics, and Conceptual Integration Theory, the study shows how reference-point relations, frame activation, and local compressions in blended spaces account for familiar patterns such as AUTHOR→WORK (“She reads Shakespeare”) and PLACE→INSTITUTION (“The White House issued a statement”). The analysis highlights the roles of salience, profiling, and cultural models in stabilizing metonymic preferences across languages and registers, and it outlines operational diagnostics for distinguishing metonymy from metaphor in corpus data. We argue that metonymy is not a peripheral stylistic device but a fundamental cognitive mechanism embedded in embodied experience and socio-cultural practice. The paper concludes with implications for linguistic theory, cross-linguistic variation, corpus methodology, and applied domains including translation, lexicography, and natural language understanding.