The argumentative and rhetorical function of metonymy in an epidemic/ pandemic context

Thanks to cognitive linguistics – as defined by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson – metonymy has also been recognized as a powerful cognitive tool for conceptual contiguity that allows us to conceptualize a certain thing through its relationship with something else. Metonymic concepts form part of the ordinary and everyday way in which we live, structuring not only our language but also our thoughts, attitudes, and actions. This paper highlights how widespread discursive actions within an epidemic/pandemic context manifest themselves in argumentative and rhetorical motifs that can be identified with metonymic processes, which in turn reflect specific cognitive mechanisms and also influence the narrative forms used to describe the experience of contagion and illness affecting oneself, a family member, or on a collective level. In other words, the argumeThanks to cognitive linguistics – as defined by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson – metonymy has also been recognized as a powerful cognitive tool for conceptual contiguity that allows us to conceptualize a certain thing through its relationship with something else. Metonymic concepts form part of the ordinary and everyday way in which we live, structuring not only our language but also our thoughts, attitudes, and actions. This paper highlights how widespread discursive actions within an epidemic/pandemic context manifest themselves in argumentative and rhetorical motifs that can be identified with metonymic processes, which in turn reflect specific cognitive mechanisms and also influence the narrative forms used to describe the experience of contagion and illness affecting oneself, a family member, or on a collective level. In other words, the argumentative logic of contagion (regardless of the semantic discrepancy of the term contagion in antiquity and contemporaneity) seems to have been based on and manifested through contiguous inferential mechanisms over the centuries. ntative logic of contagion (regardless of the semantic discrepancy of the term contagion in antiquity and contemporaneity) seems to have been based on and manifested through contiguous inferential mechanisms over the centuries.