Domains and Dimensions in Metonymy: A Corpus-Based Study of Schengen and Maastricht

Abstract

This study adopts a prototype account of metonymy in an investigation of the placenames Schengen and Maastricht in Norwegian newspaper corpora. The model is used to hypothesize about metonymic development, indeterminacy, and chaining, and it is suggested that diachronic development, indeterminacy, and chaining follow given directional pathways along the dimensional continua. In these data, the 2 place names show converse distributions of literal and metonymic uses, and Schengen develops a range of different metonymic uses. These patterns are linked to extralinguistic political events and specific directions of category extension. Indeterminacy and chaining are also demonstrated in ways that lend support to the hypotheses presented. In including both domains and dimensions, the prototype account gives considerable leverage with regard to indeterminacy and chaining, and is also well-suited to the particular challenges posed by the Norwegian noun compounds included here.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors thank Knut Hofland of the The Centre of Culture, Language, and Information Technology (Aksis) at the University of Bergen for help in preparing the Atekst material and in other corpus-related matters, and Ragnhild Sundsbak for assistance on the Atekst material. The authors also thank members of the EURLING group at the University of Bergen/Rokkan Centre for valuable discussions of earlier drafts of this article. And, finally, the authors thank Ray Gibbs and an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments on an earlier version of the article. All remaining faults are the authors' responsibility alone.

Notes

¹The months selected for Maastricht were identified because of their political relevance for the relationship between the EU and Norway: In November 1992 Norway formally applied for membership in the EU, negotiations on Norwegian ascension started in April 1993. And in September 1994 the referendum campaign was well underway. A further subsequent three periods were selected to investigate not only the fate of the Maastricht metonymy following rejection of membership by Norwegian voters in November 1994, but also to allow for investigation of Schengen, by the time the Schengen agreement had gained relevance for Norway. In December 1996 Norway, along with another non-member, Iceland, signed the Schengen agreement, followed by ratification in May 1997, and in March 2001 the agreement was implemented and Norway became, as it were, part of “Schengen”.