THE PERSON FOR A SALIENT FEATURE METONYMY IN ENGLISH AND BULGARIAN MEDIA TEXTS

Personal names metonymies are well exploited by the media. Some of the most frequent types of metonymies of this kind are RULLER FOR THE STATE (which is related to the STATE IS A PERSON metaphor and both often are used in the same article), CONTROLLER FOR THE CONTROLLED, THE PERSON FOR SOME SALIENT FEATURE. This paper deals with the last type of personal names metonymy- the PERSON FOR SOME SALIENT FEATURE. The person for a salient feature metonymy can be divided into several types- PERSON FOR THE QUALITY OF THE PERSON, PERSON A PHYSICAL RESEMBLANCE, and A PERSON FOR A PERSON’S ACT.The PERSON FOR A PERSON’S QUALITY metonymy is found in cases in which a name of a prominent person is used to demonstrate a certain quality, associated with that person. This type of metonymy can result in creating nicknames.The PERSON FOR THE PHYSICAL RESEMBLANCE metonymy is found in cases in which there is a physical similarity between the object in the metonymic source the object the metonymic target a physical.The PERSON FOR THE PERSON’S ACT metonymy is used when the referent’s action is associated with an action that another person performed.As stated by Lakoff , metonymy is one of the basic characteristics of cognition as “it is extremely common for people to take one well-understood or easy-to-perceive aspect of something and use it to stand either for the thing as a whole or for some other aspect or part of it” (Lakoff 1987: 94). In the PERSON FOR A SALIENT FEATURE metonymy, the popularity and well-perceived image of the person in the metonymic source helps it to activate the metonymic target. Text receivers’ general knowledge and the contex in which metonymies are used contributes to the metonymy’s successful creation and understanding.In some cases there is a combination between two types of PERSON FOR SOME SALIENT FEATURE metonymy.In all the above mentioned types of metonymy, it is possible for all types of names to serve as metonymic target: first name, surname, or nickname.