Tropes, Transsumptio, Assumptio, and the Redirection of Studies in Metaphor

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
The study of tropical language and its cognitive functions is severely hampered by the general characterization of a variety of linguistic phenomena as metaphor. This article first distinguishes between metaphor and other types of tropical operations. More important, it utilizes the 13th-century doctrines of transsumptio and assumptio to account for the cognitive operations involved in seven tropes: metaphor, antonomasia, synecdoche, metonymy, allegory, catachresis, and onomatopoeia. It then demonstrates that the identification of a trope independent of its context and function is meaningless. The discussion concludes by calling for a study of tropes that emphasizes their various functions rather than traditional names.

This publication has 12 references indexed in Scilit: