Abstract

News headlines have always been regarded as the eyes or soul of news report. Headlines language is concise and highly summarized. With the increasingly frequent communication among international, reading news occupies an important position in people’s lives. Due to the fast pace of life in today’s society, people require to grasp the major events by just reading the headlines. Originally influenced by Aristotle, metonymy was considered as “a rhetorical level language”. With the rise of cognitive linguistics, metonymy not only is a rhetorical device, but also a way of thinking, it is gradually seen as an important way to human understanding of the objective world. Using metonymy can make people focus on the significant aspects of the object which is to be alleged, metonymy plays an important role in the headline news discourse organization. Therefore, based on cognitive metonymy theory, this thesis makes the case studies of the news headlines which contain metonymy, in order to make people more accurately understand of the news headlines.

Key words: Cognitive metonymy; News headlines; Idealized Cognitive Model

Contents

Abstract

摘要

1. Introduction-1

2 Literature Review-2

2.1 Traditional studies of news headlines-3

2.2 Cognitive study of metonymy in news headlines-3

3 Theoretical Foundation: Cognitive Metonymy Theory-4

3.1 Cognitive understanding of metonymy-4

3.2 Classification of cognitive metonymy-6

3.3 Working mechanisms of metonymy-7

3.3.1 Idealized cognitive models-7

3.3.2 Cognitive reference point-8

3.3.3 Mapping-8

3.3.4 Highlighting-9

4 Cognitive Analysis of Metonymy in News Headlines-9

4.1 Definitions of the news headlines-9

4.2 Classification of the news headlines-10

4.3 The use of metonymy in news headlines-11

4.4 Functions of metonymy in news headlines-13

5 Conclusion-14

References-16