*Discourse refers to language produced by its users, interaction is implied and it further extends to cover longer stretches of language, rather than only sentences and utterances. This means that discourse is something broad and diverse as it is applied both to written and spoken language; thus, discourse explores who uses the language, to whom, why, when, where and how. (Sifianou, 2001:1-9)
By ‘polysemy’ I mean:
a) ‘the phenomenon whereby a single vehicle has multiple related sense-units associated with it’ (Evans 2009: 149).
b) “the association of two or more related senses with a single linguistic form” (Taylor, 2003: 638).
c) not only a property of words but also a property of morphemes, morphosyntactic categories, and even syntactic constructions. (2003: 638).
By ‘metonymy’ I mean the linguistic effect whereby a concept stands for something else; state of affairs/ situations/ events etc.
Both polysemy and metonymy are transformed into image schemas. An image schema is the combination of visualizing reality through the sensory system of seeing, hearing, feeling. However, it is more than the senses; it covers aspects of containing and verticality as well.
When we say that polysemy is a dynamic byproduct of this operation of conceptual integration, it is not a property of the words themselves. Polysemy is therefore ubiquitous but also barely noticeable in most cases.
When we speak of something in a metonymic manner we make our adaptation in virtue of a particular context. We coerce, modulate and select information so that to conceptualize the embedded message, either written, or spoken. As Cruse (2004: 118-20) claims Selection is observed when all the readings are suppressed except one. Then, this one reading will be “selected” and in this situation we cannot have more that one alternative. Coercion is expressed by the fact that we often try to convey an “intelligible message” through possible meaning extensions. In other words, if we find one meaning we consider it as the intended meaning so that to say that the context has “coerced a new meaning. Finally, modulation could be defined as a variation arising as a result of contextual effects which do not go beyond the bounds of a single sense. Hence, contextual modulation is divided into enrichment and impoverishment. Enrichment means to add information to the semantic context and make it more specific, whereas impoverishment could be viewed as the presence of “a lexical item [which] is being used in a vague sense”.
As humans we are predisposed to use language metonymic and denote meaning in a polysemic way. Both polysemy and metonymy is dependent on higher pragmatic knowledge- knowledge of the world. In the later stages of acquisition the mind designates meaning in words by placing them into context. Theory of Mind is predisposed in humans and its processes such as contextualization are interrelated with encyclopedic knowledge and shared experience.
