Context and Encyclopedic Knowledge and the Construction of Metonymic and Metaphorical Inferences

Abstract

This article is a part of the research project whose main objective consists in investigating on an empirical basis what metaphor actually means to real readers. This empirical research has been carried out with interpretive methodology. Its main method is Group Think-Aloud, which is a dialogical practice experienced by several groups of readers reading the same text, thus constituting a collective case study. In both case studies conducted, there was a complex interaction between metonymical and metaphorical inferences in meaning construction. Through this finding, further questions emerged, which will be focused in this paper: “What is the role played by the contexts evoked and the knowledge activated by readers in constructing metonymic and metaphorical inferences?”; “What is the role played by conceptual metonymy in the process of meaning construction?” In order to answer these questions, data of one group of the second case study were analysed and discussed.