Abstract:

The present paper applies the aboutness thinking, which is one component of figurative thinking, to the study of characteristic metonymy. Based on the use of the aboutness thinking, characteristic metonymy can be generalized from the numerous and complex phenomenon of object characteristics and then abstracted into a formal characterization of [(a/A): a → A], which mainly means the innovative application of knowledge, where the cognitive subject must rely on the cultural background knowledge to construct the situation-emotion correlation, enabling the extraction of characteristic a from concept A. Besides, the language expressions based on the aboutness thinking can reflect the philosophical principle of materialist dialectics with objective dialectics and subjective dialectics consistent with each other, which is a new theoretical generalization of characteristic metonymy. This study is expected to provide a new approach to metonymy.

Key words: aboutness thinking, characteristic metonymy, innovative application of knowledge, materialist dialectics