The Storm Sank My Boat and My Dreams: The Zeugma as a Breach of Iconicity

IF 2.2 3区文学 0 LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS

Metaphor and Symbol Pub Date : 2023-03-16 DOI:10.1080/10926488.2022.2156796

Roi Tartakovsky, Yeshayahu Shen

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引用次数: 1

Abstract

ABSTRACT Zeugma (“The storm sank my boat and my dreams”) is a well-recognized figure of speech whose mechanism of operation is less well understood. We suggest treating zeugma as a breach of syntactic iconicity: the syntactic form of the coordinative construction statement implies an equivalence or semantic proximity between the two objects of the verb (boat and dreams), while the objects supplied are semantically very distant. Unlike nominal metaphors and similes, in zeugmas two metaphorically-related, nonsymmetrical objects are put in syntactically symmetrical positions. This feature, the breach of iconicity, registers as a surprise, an effect wholly different from that of metaphors and similes. Seeing zeugma in these terms makes it possible not just to explain its functioning beyond broad pronouncements about yoking together different items, but to tease apart syntactic and semantic factors that contribute to the level of the breach of iconicity and subsequently to the zeugma’s strength. Moreover, understanding zeugmas as a surprising breach of iconicity leads to the question of how this breach may be accommodated or made sense of. In the second part of the essay, we introduce three types of accommodation strategies, each with a distinct focus: the language, the objects, and the speaker.

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风暴摧毁了我的船和我的梦想：作为标志性突破的泽格玛

摘要Zeugma（“风暴击沉了我的船和我的梦”）是一种公认的修辞手法，其运作机制却鲜为人知。我们建议将zeugma视为对句法象似性的突破：配位结构陈述的句法形式意味着动词的两个宾语（船和梦）之间的对等或语义接近，而所提供的宾语在语义上非常遥远。与名词隐喻和明喻不同，在zeugmas中，两个隐喻相关的非对称对象被置于语法对称的位置。这一特征，即对象似性的突破，表现为一种惊喜，一种与隐喻和明喻完全不同的效果。用这些术语来看待zeugma，不仅可以解释它在将不同项目结合在一起的广泛声明之外的功能，还可以梳理出导致破坏象似性的句法和语义因素，从而增强zeugma的力量。此外，将zeugmas理解为对象似性的一种令人惊讶的突破，这就引出了如何适应或理解这种突破的问题。在文章的第二部分，我们介绍了三种类型的适应策略，每种策略都有不同的重点：语言、对象和说话者。

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来源期刊

Metaphor and Symbol Multiple-

CiteScore

2.90

自引率

0.00%

发文量

期刊介绍： Metaphor and Symbol: A Quarterly Journal is an innovative, multidisciplinary journal dedicated to the study of metaphor and other figurative devices in language (e.g., metonymy, irony) and other expressive forms (e.g., gesture and bodily actions, artworks, music, multimodal media). The journal is interested in original, empirical, and theoretical research that incorporates psychological experimental studies, linguistic and corpus linguistic studies, cross-cultural/linguistic comparisons, computational modeling, philosophical analyzes, and literary/artistic interpretations. A common theme connecting published work in the journal is the examination of the interface of figurative language and expression with cognitive, bodily, and cultural experience; hence, the journal''s international editorial board is composed of scholars and experts in the fields of psychology, linguistics, philosophy, computer science, literature, and media studies.