meaning construction in verbomusical environments: conceptual disintegration and metonymy

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Meaning construction in verbomusicalenvironments: Conceptual disintegration

www.elsevier.com/locate/pragmaJournal of Pragmatics 70 (2014) 130--151

and metonymy

Paula Pérez-Sobrino *

Department of Modern Languages, University of La Rioja (Logrono, Spain), c/ San José de Calasanz 33,26004 Logrono, La Rioja, Spain

Received 6 October 2013; received in revised form 18 June 2014; accepted 22 June 2014

Abstract

In this paper I explore the workings of meaning (re)construction strategies in programmatic musical works, where the music stands fora broader extra-musical narration. The analysis of ten fragments of classical and contemporary music involving text and music revealsthat conceptual disintegration in connection to metonymy emerges as a crucial tool for meaning (re)construction in programmatic music.This research presents four major contributions to the field. First, this paper holds for the complementariness of networks of conceptualdisintegration and metonymic mappings in order to convincingly account for conceptual disintegration as a product (i.e., the multimodalexpression) and as a process (i.e., the conceptual operation). Second, concerning the product, this paper provides a theoreticalcategorization of conceptual disintegration in terms of the ‘‘degree of disintegration’’ and ‘‘degree of subsidiarity’’ between therepresented part and the whole conceptual package. Third, concerning the process, this work claims that metonymy arises as powerfulanalytical tool because it counts on a higher degree of constraint than blends. A view from Conceptual Metonymy Theory allows us toexpand the inventory of possible meaning reconstruction processes in multimodal use: metonymic echoing, metaphtonymy, metonymiccueing, source-in-target metonymies and multiple source-in-target metonymies. Fourth, this paper deals with musical and verbomusicalexamples, largely unexplored in cognitive-linguistic studies.© 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Conceptual disintegration; Inference; Meaning construction; Music; Multimodal metonymy; Patterns of interaction

1. Introduction

This paper aims at delving deeper into the different levels of multimodal meaning rendered in verbo-musicalenvironments. More specifically, it focuses on a particular strategy of musical meaning (re)construction,1 i.e., the wayin which different patterns of conceptual disintegration that structure the multimodal expression trigger the activationof metonymic reasoning at the conceptual level, in ten examples of program classical and contemporary musicinvolving music and text. Program or programmatic music refers to a type of art music that attempts to render anextra-musical narrative. While the vast majority of music scholars readily acknowledge the existence of programmatic

* Tel.: +34 941 299416; fax: +34 941 299419.E-mail addresses: [email protected], [email protected].

1 The term ‘‘meaning (re) construction’’ is preferred in this paper over ‘‘meaning construction’’ because it refers to both the production andinterpretation of meaning.

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pieces, the idea of reconstructing a composer’s intention per se is actually somewhat controversial2 (cf.; Barthes,1965; Bloom, 1973; Wimsatt, 1954). The interpretation of the message that program music aims to convey is alwaysdependent on the inferential capabilities of the speakers to a higher or lower extent. In this paper, we contend that thisprocess of meaning reconstruction is aided by the combined workings of conceptual disintegration and metonymy. Asshall be argued, these theoretical constructs guide and constrain the meaning reconstruction process, so that theinferential load is largely reduced, the cognitive cost lessened, and the intended message more straightforwardlyrecovered.

In this paper, conceptual disintegration relates to a selective projection of a multimodal manifestation, whereasmetonymy refers to the cognitive process based on granting access from a subdomain (in this case, the partiallyrepresentedmultimodal representation) to a larger andmore-encompassingmatrix domain. Disintegration andmetonymyemerge as crucial tools for meaning (re)construction in programmatic musical works, where the music evokes a broaderextra-musical narration.

Disintegration as a tool for meaning (re)construction has not received very much scholar attention. AlthoughFauconnier and Turner (2002:119) have acknowledged its concomitancy to conceptual integration,3 nothing has beenpublished in this regard since Hougaard’s (2005) and Bache (2005) interesting insights in Journal of Pragmatics. Framedwithin Conceptual Blending Theory (CBT; Fauconnier and Turner, 2002), Hougaard (2002:3) defines disintegration as ‘‘aprocess by which one unified and discrete structural element in mental space gets to receivemultiple counterpart relationsand is projected to (an)other mental space(s) as two, or more, separate structural elements’’. Notwithstanding theattention that CBT has drawn to the issue of conceptual disintegration, the paradigm cannot sufficiently account for thewhole phenomenon of meaning (re)construction. Among other shortages (for a critical review of CBT, see Gibbs, 2000;Ritchie, 2004; Ruiz de Mendoza, 1998), the conceptual blend cannot provide us with a convincing separation betweendisintegration as a product (the linguistic or multimodal expression) and as a process (i.e., the conceptual operation). AsGibbs emphasizes (2000:531), ‘‘the processes of linguistic understanding are different from the products we consciouslythink about when we read or hear verbal expressions’’ (let ‘‘linguistic’’ and ‘‘verbal’’ stand for ‘‘multimodal’’ for the purposesof this paper). In order to comply with this theoretical distinction, this research delves deeper into the nature and scope ofconceptual disintegration and offers an analysis that differs from that of Hougaard (2005) and Bache (2005) in at least fourways.

First, it holds for the complementariness of networks of conceptual disintegration and metonymic mappings in order toconvincingly account for disintegration as a product (the linguistic or multimodal expression) and as a process (i.e., theconceptual operation). Meaning (re)construction is here understood as a two-step process: the first involves theconfiguration of certain cues to structure the multimodal manifestation ( product), and the second relates to the cognitiveoperations triggered at the conceptual level by those multimodal cues ( process).

Second, as regards the partial representation of a multimodal expression, or product, this paper provides a theoreticalcategorization in terms of the ‘‘degree of disintegration’’ (which yields a distinction between substitution andfragmentation) and ‘‘kind of subsidiarity’’ between the represented part and the whole conceptual package (on the basis ofinherent dependency or ad hoc dependency). This two-variable taxonomy, here labeled as the Multimodal ConceptualIntegration Model (MCIM, Pérez-Sobrino, 2014), goes a step further than CBT in offering at least two criteria to distinguishdifferent types of disintegrated conceptual networks and the principles motivating them.

Third, concerning disintegration as a process, this work claims that metonymy arises as a powerful analytical tool inconnection to conceptual disintegration because it counts on a higher degree of constraint than blends and it features agreater interactional dimension. As will be shown, the patterns of interaction between metonymies propounded in Ruiz deMendoza (2000), i.e., metonymic expansion and metonymic reduction, can account in finer grain for all the inferentialactivity arising from Hougaard’s (2005) conceptual disintegration processes, i.e., splitting and partitioning selection.Furthermore, a view fromConceptual Metonymy Theory (henceforth, CMyT) allows us to expand the inventory of possiblemeaning reconstruction processes: evidence is shown to prove the productive working of multimodalmetonymic echoing,multimodal metaphtonymy, multimodal metonymic cueing, multimodal source-in-target metonymy and multimodal

2 For instance, Mailman (2012) shows tight connections between the intention of the composer and the program structuring the music (e.g., theprelude to Wagner’s Das Rhinegold, where the inevitable flowing of a river is depicted as a gradual increase in pitch range, rate of repetition,number of ostinato layers, orchestral thickness, and proportion of upward motion; Mailman, 2012: chapter 6) and equally meaningfulcorrespondences between a program and a musical work that was not meant to refer to any extra-musical reality (as it is the case of Lucier’sCrossings, a minimalistic piece which unpurposefully yet readily ‘‘evokes the revving of an airplane engine, ominous sirens or a nuclear explosionin slow motion’’; Mailman, 2012: chapter 6). Mailman (2009) thus argues in favor of the feasibility of a strong coordination between the musicalwork and the structuring program, while also stressing the legitimate role of discourse in creating meaning out the musical work, given that ‘‘whatseems more narrative in kind depends a lot on convention and context’’ (Mailman, 2009:406).

3 In words of Fauconnier and Turner (2002:119),‘‘integration and compression are one side of the coin; disintegration and decompression arethe other’’.

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multiple-source-in target metonymies as additional means to reconstruct absent information. This proposal proves alsofavorable to the issue of predicting the cognitive impact of conceptual disintegration, since the scope of possibleinferences arising from a metonymic mapping is much more narrowed down than that of blends.

The fourth novelty of this paper resides in the corpus of study. Traditionally, research in CBT and CMyT has offeredlinguistic evidence to support their claims on the conceptual working of everyday thought. However, further evidence innon-verbal modes is necessary for a theory about thought to be exhaustive. In this regard, musical understanding remainsa complex and largely unexplored issue in Cognitive Linguistics (CL). Only musical metaphor has drawn scholarlyattention (Brower, 2000; Cook, 1992; Cox, 2011; Forceville, 2009a; Larson, 2012; Larson and Johnson, 2004; Pérez-Sobrino, 2014; Spitzer, 2008; Zbikowski, 2002). In compliance with this theoretical necessity, this work provides evidenceof the productive workings of musical metonymy in a selected bulk of multimodal examples including text and music. Aswill be shown, the interaction of metonymy with other cognitive operations guides and steers the conceptualization ofcertain musical elements as a person, a person in motion or even an event.

The remainder of this paper is structured as follows. In section 2, I address some basic theoretical notions that willground the subsequent analysis. I deal with the concept of conceptual disintegration (2.1) which, for the purposes of thispaper, is subdivided in cases of substitution and fragmentation. I briefly introduce some basic notions of metonymy (2.2)and sketch the basic workings of meaning reconstruction operations (2.3), in which patterns of disintegration creativelycombine with metonymy. In section 3 I turn to analyze several patterns of disintegration in combination with metonymy(which I illustrate with ten examples of classical and contemporary music with text). I retrieve the main proposals of thispaper in section 4, and suggest further lines of potential research.

2. Theoretical framework

2.1. Conceptual disintegration

Conceptual disintegration has been traditionally associated to selective projection in CBT studies4 (Turner, 2001;Fauconnier and Turner, 2002). Within this paradigm, disintegration serves to fragment or partition conceptual wholes intoelements that may be recruited for individual projection to blended spaces, in a process that usually remains unnoticed.However, Hougaard (2005:1673) notices that selective projection requires an extra effort when the selected projectedelements stem from the same tightly integrated source. These cases, labeled as partitioning selection (to make adistinction to regular selection, Hougaard, 2005:1673), thus require a more laborious inferential activity. This observationsets an interesting starting point to survey the unattended facet of conceptual disintegration as a necessarycounterbalance to traditional analysis of conceptual integration in form of blends. Subsequently, Bache (2005) hascontinued in this line by further acknowledging the vital role of disintegration within CBT.

In spite of this interesting insight, the pervasiveness and ubiquity of CBT to all kind of mental activity posits severalproblems, mainly concerned with a satisfactory insight on specific phenomena. I shareGibbs’ (2000) skepticism in relationto the excessive explanatory power of blends, which makes them vulnerable to criticism. From CBT, it still remains to beexplained how the blend as a process influences the product of conceptual disintegration. In the remainder of this section,I offer a tentative taxonomy to frame the interplay of networks of conceptual disintegration with metonymy (as will beshown in section 4).

In this paper, conceptual disintegration is considered part of a broader descriptive framework designed to describepatterns of conceptual integration in a greater degree of detail than CBT: the Multimodal Conceptual Integration Model(MCIM; Pérez-Sobrino, 2014, wherein the model is applied to the study of verbomusical networks of conceptualintegration). This new typology incorporates three basic novelties with respect to CBT: (a) it establishes different degreesof (dis)integration between conceptual inputs; (b) it contemplates different degrees of subsidiarity between the integratedinputs; and (c) it applies to multimodal hybrids, not only to linguistic examples.5

4 Conceptual blending is a cognitive operation whose uniform and dynamic structure underlies probably all cognitive phenomena, includingcategorization, metaphor, metonymy, metaphor, and analogy among others (analyses of conceptual integration in linguistic examples from a CBTperspective are given in Coulson, 1996; Fauconnier and Turner, 1998, 2002; Oakley, 1998). The main exponent of research on conceptualintegration in music and verbomusical instances from a CBT perspective is Zbikowski (2002--present).

5 For an alternative model to deal with interrelationships between various component media, and potential sources of potential meaning(s), seeCook’s (1992) ‘‘Models of Multimedia’’. Briefly put, the essence of the model is to determine whether component media are communicatingconsistent, coherent or contrastive information via different perceptual modalities. In spite of its proved validity, the emphasis put on theinterrelation of modalities does not make it a suitable model to study conceptual disintegration networks. By contrast, the interest of the MCIM inthe degree of disintegration and the kind of dependency between the represented input and the domain to which it belongs lends further support tothe choice of this model to explore how the multimodal expression motivates different cognitive patterns at the conceptual level.

P. Pérez-Sobrino / Journal of Pragmatics 70 (2014) 130--151 133[(Fig._1)TD$FIG]

Fig. 1. Schematic representation of conceptual disintegration by substitution and fragmentation (black for partial present structure; white anddiscontinuous line for absent structure which needs to be reconstructed or inferred).

Regarding the degree of integration, theMCIM places conceptual disintegration and conceptual integration at oppositeextremes of the same continuum. Conceptual disintegration designates the highlight of partial selection from a certainconceptual package, whereas conceptual integration involves the incorporation of several elements or partial projectionsof several elements.

The productivity of the patterns of interaction between multimodal elements makes it impossible to build an exhaustiveinventory of the unlimited possibilities of disintegration. For the sake of clarity in the explanation, I hitherto restrict myself toset up identifiable cases at the extremes of a continuum of disintegration.6 Substitution is a subcase of conceptualdisintegration whereby pre-existent material (A) is fully replaced by related material (A’). Take for example a situationwhere one person is yelling with anger to another, and the latter says ‘‘Don’t bark at me!’’. Here, ‘‘bark’’ has substitutedhuman speech verbs such as ‘‘yell’’ or ‘‘shout’’. Due to the lack of linguistic traces pointing out that the addressee is ahuman being, the hearer has to rely on the context to infer it. This task is relatively easy to accomplish, since humans andanimals are related by the Great Chain of Beings (Lakoff and Turner, 1989), a cultural folk model shared across cultures.

Another possibility of disintegration is fragmentation. This subcase consists in the exclusive focus on partialinformation (a) over the rest of the broader conceptual domain (A). For instance, ‘‘I need a hand here’’ highlights ‘‘hand’’over the whole domain ‘‘worker’’ or ‘‘person who can help’’. See Fig. 1 for an overview of the two processes.

The introduction of the second variable kind of dependency increases the complexity of the issue, but at the same timeoffers a feasible explanation of the different principles governing conceptual disintegration. From the strongest sort ofdependency to the weakest, this model contemplates two possibilities of relationship between the conceptual structureand its partial representation: inherent enrichment and ad hoc enrichment (in an application tomultimodal environments ofRuiz de Mendoza, 2011:108).

This distinction sheds some light on the expected cognitive effort invested in the meaning reconstruction task. Themore entrenched the relationship is between the musical representation and the extra-musical narration it refers to, thestronger their dependency is, and thus the less necessary it is to refer to contextual elements to recover the absentconceptual structure necessary to interpret the musical narrative. By contrast, the weaker the dependency between themusical representation and the external structure to which it relates, the more difficult it is to interpret the musical piece,and therefore, the greater the need to refer to contextual information. As will be claimed, the violin trills in example 1resemble the chirp of birds (in terms of melody, rhythm, dynamics, etc.), so that the hearer could do without external cuesto make that connection (for instance, the title Spring reinforces this supposition, but it is not an essential part of theinterpretive task). By contrast, in example 3, the ad hoc connection between the main theme and the character itrepresents, i.e., the beloved, makes it necessary for the hearer to rely on information external to the musical piece (thetextual program provided by the composer) to interpret the Fantastic Symphony as an autobiography.

In enrichment, conceptual disintegration takes place when the relationship between the inputs involved is of inherentsubsidiarity or ad hoc subsidiarity. Take the example ‘‘The car industry is turning green’’; here ‘‘green’’ substitutes ‘‘nature-friendly product’’. This connection is possible because green is the color of the chlorophyll, a pervasive and intrinsiccomponent in nature. Therefore, ‘‘green’’ and ‘‘nature-friendly’’ share a relation of inherent dependence in the context ofnatural environments. Additionally, the elements involved in a substitution or fragmentation network can becomedependent on one another through ad hoc dependency. Consider the example ‘‘He has climbed his way to the top’’, wherethe PATH and the VERTICALITY schema, while not initially interdependent, become subsidiary to one another in order toexpress that the greatest achievements are at the top of an upward path. See Fig. 2 for a schematic representation.

Table 1 provides a schematic overview of this paradigm for the study of multimodal conceptual disintegration. Example1 (Vivaldi’s Four Seasons -- the Spring), 2 (Schubert’s Gretchen by the Spinning Wheel), 3 (Berlioz’s FantasticSymphony), and 4 (Edith Piaf’s ‘‘Je ne regrette rien de rien’’ in Christopher Nolan’s movie Inception) render cases of

6 The reader is referred to Author (2014) for the explanation and examples of additional types of conceptual integration (incorporation andmultiple incorporation) and degrees of dependency (combination) within this model.


[(Fig._2)TD$FIG]

Fig. 2. Conceptual disintegration by inherent enrichment in ‘‘The car industry is turning green’’ and by ad hoc enrichment in ‘‘He hasmade his wayto the top’’ (white for absent domain; black for present subdomains that are or have become dependent to the more-encompassing domain).

Table 1Conceptual disintegration in the MCIM (with examples).

Degree of disintegration

Substitution Fragmentation

Kind of dependencyEnrichment

Inherent subsidiarity 1) Vivaldi’s violin and viola trills in TheFour Seasons - Spring

6) Grieg’s In the Hall of the Mountain King*

2) Schubert’s left hand in Gretchen bythe Spinning Wheel*

Ad hoc subsidiarity 3) Berlioz’s idée fixe in Fantastic Symphony 5) Papageno’s theme in Mozart’s The Magic Flute4) Nolan’s Inception adaption of Edith

Piaf’s Non, je ne regretted rien7) Ravel’s use of the pentatonic scale in Laindenotte,

Imperatrice des Pagodes8) Lohegrin and Elsa’s leitmotifs in Wagner’s Lohengrin9) Nokia tune10) Sword leitmotif in Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelungs

substitution where the metonymy is triggered by an absent cue. This is the case of instrumental pieces where the title orthe textual program, not present in the music, play a more or less important role in the interpretation of the musical work.The manner in which the hearer recovers the missing information, determined by the type of dependency between thepartially represented input and the whole conceptual material to which it belongs, is also variable: examples 1 and 2 showcases where the proper reconstruction of the musical narrative is based on the physical resemblance between theexternal physical event (the birds’ chirp and the motion of a spinning wheel, respectively) and the musical motive itmotivates (either via the direct imitation of the external sound in the melody or the reproduction of the trajectory of theevent in the melodic line). Since there is a manifest and recognizable analogy (in terms of melody, melodic line, dynamics,rhythm, etc.), the musical motive is inherently dependent on the event it resembles. However, in examples 3 and 4, themusical expression becomes dependent on an external linguistic cue provided by the surrounding verbomusical contextfor the extra-musical narration to be interpreted.

The rest of the examples, 5 (Mozart’s The Magic Flute -- Papageno’s theme), 6 (Grieg’s Peer Gynt -- In the Hall of theMountain King), 7 (Ravel’sMother Goose -- Laindeonette, Empress of the Pagodas), 8 (Wagner’s Lohengrin -- Lohengrinand Elsa leitmotifs), 9 (Nokia tune), and 10 (Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelungs -- Sword leitmotif) deliver cases offragmentation. In these examples, the incomplete conceptual structure that triggers the metonymic operation is present inthe multimodal expression. Once again, the interpretation of this multimodal input relies either on the hearer’sencyclopedic knowledge or on ad hoc contextual cues. For instance, the ensuing analysis shows that only in example 6the rhythmic input is inherently dependent and closely imitates the motion event it describes. The rest of the cases showmore or less arbitrary ascriptions between their music and the extra-musical narrative they represent that have becomedependent through the programmatic musical work.


[(Fig._4)TD$FIG]

Fig. 4. Target-in-source metonymy and metonymic reduction in the ‘‘surgical bombing’’ example.

[(Fig._3)TD$FIG]

Fig. 3. Source-in-target metonymy and metonymic expansion in ‘‘Richard’s at war with himself over who to marry’’.

2.2. Metonymy

The partial representation of a multimodal input requires a cognitive operation that enriches and expands the renderedhighlighted part and grants access to the whole conceptual domain in order to make full sense of it. Hougaard (2005) setoff an interesting foray in the identification of delimited processes of conceptual disintegration. Splitting (2005:1664) refersto ‘‘the process by which something perceived as an integrated structure gets to be mapped onto two or more discretestructural elements in another mental space and is projected as two or more separate structural items’’. By way ofillustration, he explains that in ‘‘Richard is at war with himself over who to marry’’, ‘‘Richard’’ is projected onto twoparticipant roles, ‘‘Richard1 who wants to marry X’’ and ‘‘Richard2 who wants to marry Y’’, who are portrayed asadversaries. Splitting thus elaborates on the conceptualization of the hinted involved structure.

Commensurate with this rationale, a metonymy also accounts for this example. Metonymy is a cognitive operation bywhich we conceptualize one thing by its relation to something else (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980:139; see also Barcelona,2000, 2011; Ruiz de Mendoza, 2000, 2013). Each self (self1 or ‘‘Richard who wants to marry’’ and self2 ‘‘Richard whodoesn’t want to marry’’) constitutes a subdomain of a more encompassing matrix domain (SELF or ‘‘Richard’’).Interestingly enough, Ruiz de Mendoza (2000) has already identified source-in-target metonymies, where the source(self1 / self2) is a subdomain that affords access to the most encompassing domain (SELF) via a metonymic expansionprocess (see Fig. 3). Source-in-target metonymies provide a cognitively economical point of access to a complex scenarioto the extent required for the interpretation of the utterance to be possible.

Additionally,Hougaard brings forwarda secondprocess of conceptual disintegration that is alsoamenable to explanationfromCMyT.Partitioning selection (Hougaard, 2005:1673) designates ‘‘the selected and projected elements [that] stem fromthe same tightly integrated source’’. In order to illustrate his argument, this scholar analyzes a chunk of radio conversationwhere the speaker compares massive bombings in Iraq to those in Dresden during IIWW. This comparison is possiblegiven that both ‘‘Bagdad’’ and ‘‘Dresden’’ belong to the ‘‘bombing’’ frame, and it ismeant to highlight the allied intention tocause as much destruction as possible. However, the interlocutor sets up barriers against unwelcomed automaticprojections by referring to allied intervention in Bagdad as ‘‘surgical bombing’’ (meaning that it was carried out withprecision, contrary to the attack of Dresden). This new feature holds primacy over inferences that follow from thebombing frame that could also apply for the German input. The highlight of a certain feature (‘‘surgical bombing’’) overothers (‘‘destructive bombing’’) is also explained by Ruiz de Mendoza (2000) in terms of target-in-source metonymies.See Fig. 4 for a schematic overview of this metonymic mapping, in which a reduction process highlights the target(subdomain ‘‘surgical bombing’’) over the whole source (matrix domain ‘‘BOMBING’’), whereas other subdomainsremain obscured: this is the case of bombings in Dresden (subdomain ‘‘massive bombing’’). This specific metonymicmapping steers our attention toward themost relevant aspects of the target, which are seen from the perspective of theircorresponding source elements.

2.3. A two-stepwise approach to meaning (re)construction

An approach to meaning reconstruction that combines the insights from both the MCIM and CMyT avoids the kind oftheoretical limitations I have addressed in the previous section in relation to CBT. First, metonymic expansion andreduction mappings (Ruiz de Mendoza, 2000) are commensurate with Hougaard’s (2005) proposal of two disintegrationprocesses, namely, splitting and partitioning selection. Additionally, a metonymy-oriented account counts on a greater


[(Fig._6)TD$FIG]

Fig. 6. Fragmentation and metonymy (black for the present multimodal manifestation; white and discontinuous line for absent material in themultimodal manifestation; white and continuous line for accessible information via metonymic expansion).

[(Fig._5)TD$FIG]

Fig. 5. Substitution and metonymy (black for the present multimodal manifestation; white and discontinuous line for absent material in themultimodal manifestation; white and continuous line for accessible information via metonymic expansion).

interactional dimension with other tropes (as will be shown in the ensuing analysis) with a higher degree of constraint thanconceptual blends. In fact, a closer look at the data shows that only metonymic expansion processes are productivemeaning reconstruction strategies for disintegrated multimodal products. It only seems natural, given that the hearers areexpected to construe a whole story out of a partial verbomusical rendering. Second, it successfully addresses thedifference between product and process. That would lead us to conclude that this two-stepwise strategy also goes beyondthe scope of CMyT, since it also deals with differences at the dimension of the multimodal manifestation (or product), andnot only at the conceptual level (or process).

Figs. 5 and 6 show a schematic overview of the two possibilities of meaning reconstruction discussed in this paper. Insubstitution in connection to metonymy (Fig. 5), partial conceptual material (a’ in black) fully substitutes related partialconceptual material (a in white and discontinuous lines). This partial representation (a’) affords access to the mostencompassing domain (A) via ametonymic expansion process. Recall once again the example presented in Fig. 1, ‘‘Don’tbark at me’’. Once that ‘‘bark’’ substitutes human speech verbs such as ‘‘yell’’ or ‘‘shout’’, a metonymic expansion processof the type SOUND FORPRODUCER affords access to the whole domain ‘‘person’’. The effect of the combined workingsof substitution and metonymic expansion is the conceptualization of a bad-mannered person that treats others with thesame anger as barking dogs. This meaning (re)construction strategy is followed in examples 1--4 (cf. Table 1), as will beshown in the next section.

In turn, fragmentation connected to metonymy (Fig. 6) relates to the way in which partial conceptual material (a’ inblack) is projected over the rest of the multimodal representation (A in white). This partial representation (a’) is part of thesubdomain (a) or coincides with the subdomain (a) that affords access to the most encompassing domain (A) via ametonymic expansion process. If we consider again the example already offered in Fig. 2, the relevant role of thesubdomain ‘‘hand’’ within the broader domain ‘‘worker’’ makes it salient in expressions such as ‘‘I need a hand here’’. A


metonymic expansion process of the type HAND FOR WORKER makes of ‘‘hand’’ an economic point to access thebroader scenario in which a person is able to help in physical labor involving the hands. This meaning reconstructionstrategy is present in examples 5--10 (cf. Table 1).

Third, CMyT allows us to expand CBT accounts of disintegration processes by offering an expanded inventory ofpatterns of interaction between metonymy and other tropes (Ruiz de Mendoza, 2007) in multimodal use (Hidalgo andKraljevic, 2011; Pérez-Sobrino, 2014; Urios-Aparisi, 2009), as will be shown in section 3.

3. Multimodal meaning reconstruction strategies: towards the construction of an inventory

Although there is yet no published research work on verboaudial metonymies, there is some preliminary literatureon verbopictorial metonymies (cf. Forceville, 2009b; Hidalgo and Kraljevic, 2011; Urios-Aparisi, 2009) andverboaudial metaphor (Author, 2014; Forceville, 2009a; Zbikowski, 2002). This kind of research supports theproductivity of the application of tools for analyzing verbal communication to multimodal environments. This workingassumption has been labeled equipollence hypothesis in Ruiz de Mendoza and Mairal (2011). This methodologicalstance states that, in order to advance our knowledge in the field, the analyst should test whether linguistic processesthat have been attested in one domain of linguistic enquiry may also be (at least partially) active in other domains.7 Inthis connection, I argue that the application of the equipollence hypothesis in a reverse way, i.e., from non-verbal toverbal communication, makes it possible to enhance the scope of current verbal-based accounts of these two tropesin CL. Therefore, this work contributes to further the body of knowledge on CMyT by looking at multimodalmanifestations of this trope.

For the sake of explanatory clarity, I have singled out specific details of each of the analyzed examples in order to buildan inventory of different strategies of meaning reconstruction. By no means should the ensuing list imply that thesecategories aremutually exclusive. In fact, given that the selected verbomusical examples are rich and complex in nature, itis usual that one strategy leads to another over the course of the musical work (as will be made apparent in section 3.3.4).

3.1. Multimodal metonymic echoing vs. multimodal metaphtonymy

In this section I discuss two types of conventional associations between the musical work and the extra-musical realityto which it refers. Conventionality, as understood by Mailman (2009:406), arises from the hearer’s perceived similaritybetween the musical work and the underlying program. The achievement of such analogy greatly depends on the amountof shared heard surface features (in terms of melody, dynamic, rhythm, etc.) between music and extra-musical narration,making of ‘‘conventionality’’ a gradable concept.

At one extreme of the continuum, the most direct form of perceived similarity is musical echoing, an operation wherebymusic directly imitates a sound from the physical world. Take for example the musical analogy between the chirp of birdsand violin trills from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, The Spring (example 1).

In this example, the musical birds replace the birds from the real world (substitution) via direct imitation. Given theirmanifest similarity, it becomes clear that the musical rendering is inherently dependent of the real chirp of birds. Echoing(Ruiz de Mendoza, 2011) is a cognitive operation whereby the close imitation of one conceptual domain (violin trills)straightforwardly replicates another domain (the way birds sing). This ostensive similarity helps hearers to construct abroader extra-musical reality: as shown below in Fig. 7, the violin trills (which echo the warble of birds) metonymicallystands for birds as animals; what is more, these animals can also metonymically stand for spring, for the bird chirping is acentral defining feature of this season.

7 For instance, the application of the equipollence hypothesis within the Lexical Constructional Model (LCM; Mairal and Ruiz de Mendoza,2009; Ruiz de Mendoza and Mairal, 2011) has allowed the identification of metaphor and metonymy in various degrees of abstraction and ininteraction (the so-calledmetonymic andmetaphoric complexes) as underlying inferences and other kinds of construal at both argument structureand higher levels of linguistic description (e.g., pragmatic implication, illocutionary meaning and discourse).

P. Pérez-Sobrino / Journal of Pragmatics 70 (2014) 130--151138[(Fig._7)TD$FIG]

Fig. 7. Echoing andmetonymic expansion in Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, Spring (black thick arrow for substitution and echoing; simple black arrow formetonymic mapping and mode-shift).

In a less direct manner of imitation, a musical feature (melodic line, rhythm, harmony, etc.) can resemble aparadigmatic feature (such as the shape or trajectory) of a soundless object in motion. Consider the case of Schubert’sGretchen by the Spinning Wheel (example 2).

The image-schematic structure that is relevant for a spinning wheel (circular shape, never-ending circular pattern) is putin correspondence with the image-schematic structure of the melodic line, so that it closely resembles the constant andcyclical motion of wheels. In terms of conceptual disintegration networks, this example is similar to the previous one: themusical rendering substitutes the extra-musical narrative of the wheel on the grounds of a relationship of inherentdependence between the paradigmatic defining feature of the physical wheel and its musical version (which hasconsequently adopted a constant and cyclical melodic pattern). It can be argued that this ascription is somehow morearbitrary than the example discussed above: how can music univocally refer to a soundless event? Although this casecould be analyzed as an instance of metonymic cueing (to be discussed in the following subsection), it is worth noticingthat the association between the melodic theme and a wheel is also less optional than in the examples 3 and 4 discussedbelow, given that the repeated undulant melody and the wheel trajectory share a common ground property (namely, theconstant and regular motion). This example shows that there are not clear-cut boundaries between the categories of theMCIM (as schematized in Table 1) and that this model offers a continuum of different possibilities of conceptual (dis)integration networks, rather than a closed typology.

All in all, this example clearly differs from example 1 in terms of themeaning reconstruction operations at play. The typeof mapping based on the perceptual similarity between the trajectory of a wheel and the melodic line combines metaphorand metonymy, in line with Goossens (1990) and Ruiz de Mendoza’s (2000) notion of metaphtonymy. A conceptualcluster puts in perspective a prominent attribute of the source domain (constant and cyclical motion of wheels), which ismapped onto the target (music) thus highlighting a corresponding attribute (namely, the constant and undulatingaccompaniment ostinato).8 Once the analogy between the central feature of wheels and the melodic line has been

8 This metaphorical mapping based on perceptual resemblance is commensurate with Grady’s (1999) resemblance metaphor. Gradyestablished that resemblance metaphors are very basic mappings between perceptually similar entities.


Fig. 8. Substitution and metonymic expansion of the metaphoric source in Gretchen by the Spinning Wheel (black thick arrow for substitution;simple black arrows for metonymic mappings; white arrow for resemblance metaphoric mapping and mode-shift).

established through metaphor, a metonymic expansion process takes place in the metaphorical source domain in orderto access the wider context suggested by the lyrics, i.e., a girl sitting by a spinning wheel (see Fig. 8). In particular, thisexample is discussed among Ruiz de Mendoza’s (2000) patterns of interaction under the label ofmetonymic expansionof themetaphorical source. Themetonymy (PROPERTY FOROBJECT, whereby ‘‘constant and regular motion’’ standsfor ‘‘spinning wheel’’) provides a cognitively economical point of access to a complex scenario. Therefore, themetonymy has the function of developing the point-of-access subdomain to the extent required for the metaphor to bepossible.

Examples 1 and 2 fit into the same category because echoing andmetaphor are two conceptual operations of the A ISB form. In spite of their generic form, and their similarity in terms of conceptual disintegration networks (cf. Table 1),echoing andmetaphorical resemblance are not the same kind of conceptual correspondence: in echoing, one conceptualdomain (A) imitates a different conceptual domain (B); inmetaphor, on the contrary, we use certain aspects of the sourcedomain (B) to talk, reason and understand some features of the target domain (A).

3.2. Metonymic cueing

Asput byMailman (2009:406), ‘‘themoreunconventional amusicalwork is, themore it demands that narrationbeactivelysupplied, either by its perceiver ora thirdmediatingparty’’. This is precisely theeffect ofcueing (RuizdeMendoza,2011:105),abasic cognitiveoperationwhose function is toallow theaddressee toselect relevant conceptual structureandorganize it for
[(Fig._9)TD$FIG]
Fig. 9. Linguistic cueing between the text and the music and metonymic expansion in Berlioz’s Fantastic Symphony (black bold arrow for cueing;black simple arrows for metonymic mappings and mode-shift).


the interpretive task that is taking place. This notion, which has been attested so far in linguistic examples (cf. Ruiz deMendoza, 2011: ff., Ruiz de Mendoza and Galera, 2014:87 ff.), proves equally relevant to the analysis of multimodalexamples (with someadjustments, as shownbelow).More specifically, this paper dealswith the connection between cueingand multimodal metonymy (although cueing applies invariably in all meaning construction tasks).

By way of working definition, multimodal metonymic cueing can be characterized as a two-step process where theaddressee (1) selects (partial) relevant structure in onemode and (2) makes it to coincide with a subdomain that accessesall the information of the most encompassing domain rendered in a different mode via metonymic expansion.

Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique is an illustrative example of the interaction between an instrumental piece and anindependent textual program. As stated by the composer in the notes accompanying each of the five movements, ‘‘thefollowing programme must therefore be considered as the spoken text of an opera, which serves to introduce musicalmovements and to motivate their character and expression’’ (Berlioz, 1845). Under the influence of opium (in the 1855version), a young and sensitive artist (Berlioz himself), experiences a series of visions (the different movements of thesymphony) in which his beloved figures as a theme or idée fixe (see example 3). The idée fixe recurs in every movementas a haunting obsession (although each time in a different form).

One of the characteristics of instrumental pieces is that they count on two independent components (verbal text andmusical part) that render disintegrated versions on their own of the musical work. Text and music are thus processed inchronological fashion, where the music substitutes the linguistic program once the instrumental interpretation begins.However, notice that the fact that they are independent does not mean that they are not related. In fact, the narration isessential to select and activate relevant information in the musical part; and therefore, it becomes subsidiary to the musicto set the construction of the musical narration. Given that they are not inherently dependent, it is necessary to refer to theprogram provided by the composer in order to select the relevant structure from the music to decode the extra--musicalnarrative.

Hearers need to take into consideration the composer’s obsession for his beloved in order to interpret the idée fixeconveyed by the instrumental part. In this case, the program (Berlioz, 1845) linguistically cues ‘‘a certain quality ofpassion, but endowed with the nobility and shyness which he credits to the object of [the artist’s] love’’ in the music. Oncethe idée fixe has been recognized, the hearer needs to undertake a series of cognitive processes to interpret the theme asthe beloved, and then the symphony as an autobiographic discourse of ‘‘an artist gifted with a lively imagination’’ who has‘‘poisoned himself with opium’’ in the ‘‘depths of despair’’ because of ‘‘hopeless love’’ (Berlioz, 1845). This metonymicmapping is multimodal, since it expands a linguistic subdomain, i.e., the verbal allusion to the beloved, into a musicalnarrative, i.e., the recurring idée fixe (see Fig. 9).

It can also happen that the music hints the construction of an entire textual narrative. For instance, this is a recurrentresource in movies to set the mood of a determined scene or to further characterize the protagonists. However, there aremuchmore creativemanifestations of music which are illustrative to this study. One outstanding example is the adaptationof Edith Piaf’s ‘‘Non, je ne regrette rien’’ in Christopher Nolan’s (2010) movie Inception (example 4).


Fig. 10. Musical cueing between Edith Piaf ’sNon, je ne regrette rien and the extra-musical narration andmetonymic expansion in Inception (blackthick arrow for cueing; black simple arrow for metonymic mapping and mode-shift).

Inception is a multidimensional dream-within-a-dream action film in which a main character switches between realityand several levels of dreaming in order to deal with an unresolved past issue. Since there are at least four levels ofdreaming at play, it gets difficult to determine the exact dreaming level in which the character is as the story develops. Inorder to ease things up, there is a musical iconic motive (a slowed-down version of Edith Piaf’s song instrumentation interms of a brass instrument fanfare) that helps the viewers to detect the moment in which the protagonists leave the realworld and enter in one of the dreaming dimensions.9 Hence, the musical cue sets up the environment where the actionoccurs. In this case, the music substitutes the audiovisual narration as soon as the scene has turned from the reality to thedream dimension. Much in the same line with the previous example, music and audiovisual narration become subsidiaryto each other in order to understand the story. Furthermore, a metonymic expansion process can provide viewers withadditional extra-musical information, such as the level of dreaming the protagonists are (the plot involves at least four), bymodifying musical features such as rhythm, instruments or harmony (Fig. 10).

At first sight, metonymic cueing could seem to fit into the analysis of examples 1 and 2 analyzed earlier on, since it alsoinvolves a combination of substitution and metonymy. However, if we recall the classification offered in Table 1, a majordifference arises: metonymic cueing here refers to ad hoc combinations of a partial input and a matrix domain that havebecome dependent through the disintegration process, whereas in echoing the partial representation is inherentlydependent on the domain to which it belongs. On the other hand, metonymic cueing as a process is compatible withregular multimodal metonymies (examples 5--10) insofar as the metonymic mapping connects a subdomain with thematrix domain that is rendered in a different mode. However, note the difference in kind of multimodal expression thatprompts the metonymic mapping. In metonymic cueing, the subdomain belongs to an entity ‘‘a’’ (in example 3, thelinguistic reference to the beloved) that is substituted for an independent yet related entity ‘‘a’’’ (the idée fixe) that providesa vantage point to develop the musical program ‘‘A’’ via metonymic expansion (the character of the beloved, who pavesthe way to the understanding of the symphony as an autobiographic discourse). In multimodal metonymy, however, themotivation of the metonymic mapping is not substitution but fragmentation, since the subdomain ‘‘a’’ is already part of thesame domain ‘‘A’’ that is accessed directly via metonymic mapping.

9 This musical strategy can be traced back to Saint-Saëns’ famous piece ‘‘Turtles’’ from The Carnival of the Animals (1886). As hold by Mordden(1980:237), Saint Saëns borrows two racy themes from Offenbach’s musical comedy, Orpheus in the Underworld (one of them the famous can-can), and slows then down to a snail pace in order to express the drowsiness of the turtle.


3.3. Musical source-in-target metonymy

As mentioned elsewhere, multimodal source-in-target metonymies involve a cognitive operation that enables asubdomain rendered in onemode (in this case, music) to stand for themost encompassing domain conveyed in a differentmode (in this case, an extra-musical narrative). The partial multimodal representation that activates ametonymic mappingis rendered through fragmentation, and it can either fully coincide or be part of the metonymic subdomain that affordsaccess to the matrix domain through a metonymic expansion process. As evidenced in this paper, metonymy plays a keyrole in program music, since it allows composers to portray the different characters intervening in the extra-musicalnarrative on the basis of an incomplete musical element.10 In the following I provide a detailed taxonomy of different typesof multimodal metonymy on the basis of the type of rendered musical element (i.e., musical motive, rhythmic motive, keyand scale).

3.3.1. Via musical motiveAs shown in the previous discussion on Berlioz’s idée fixe in example 3, it is usual in program music to identify a

character with a musical theme, i.e., a combination of melody and rhythm. Sometimes the theme is so representative thata fragmented version of the theme (that is, a motive) is enough to give access to the matrix domain (or the character itrepresents). Consider Papageno’s theme in Mozart’s The Magic Flute (example 5a). The well-known theme is entirelydisplayed at the beginningof the opera in the aria ‘‘DerVogelfänger bin ich ja’’ (‘‘I am the bird-catcher’’). In thismusical piece,Papageno introduces himself to the audience and plays with his flute the characteristic tune with which he hunts birds.

Later on, only the ascendant flute semifuses (highlighted in red in example 5a) are played in ‘‘Wie stark ist nicht deinZaubertone’’ (‘‘How strong is thy magic tone’’, example 5b). In this scene, Prince Tamino spends the night waiting outsideSarastro’s temple. He has sent his friend Papageno to rescue Pamina, Tamino’s beloved fiancée. The Prince is alone andfull of despair until he hears Papageno and Tamina’s voices inside the temple. Themusical rendering of the plot reunites inthe aria ‘‘Wie stark ist nicht dein Zaubertone’’ Tamino’s flute theme with Papageno’s characteristic motive from the

10 There are some precedents in the literature that hold for the possibility of a musical piece to stand for the personality and emotional life of aperson (Blechner, 2001; Meyer, 1956).


previous aria ‘‘Der Vogelfänger bin ich ja’’ (the ascendant semifuses; also highlighted in red in example 5b). What is more,even Tamino’s lyrics in the opera reinforce this identification: ‘‘Ach, das ist Papagenoston!’’ (‘‘Ah, this is Papageno’stone!’’). In this case, the audience is capable or matching the ascendant semifuses motive to the character Papagenothanks to the previous musical context, which has made the musical motive to become dependent of the bird-catchercharacter.

This iconic ascendant flute motive is enough for Tamino and the audience to identify Papageno (hidden in the darkness)via the double metonymy MOTIVE FOR THEME FOR CHARACTER. In this mediated metonymic mapping, the MOTIVErendered in ‘‘Wie stark is nicht dein Zauberton’’ provides the hearer with a vantageous point of access to thereconstruction of the character Papageno (which is not present in the scene because he is still trapped inside Sarastro’scastle). The double metonymy here recovers the whole theme from the earlier aria ‘‘Der Vogelfänger bin ich ja’’, which inturn stands for Papageno, the bird catcher in Mozart’s opera (see Fig. 11).

3.3.2. Via rhythmic motiveA specific rhythmic pattern can also be deployed to structure a character or an event. Let’s consider the use of the

rhythmic motive in ‘‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’’, from Grieg’s orchestral suite Peer Gynt (example 6). According toIbsen’s plot, the music describes the flight of the main character, Peer Gynt, from the mountain wherein the trolls live.

The key feature to interpret this fragment is the identification of the main rhythmic theme in terms of human footsteps. Thismatching is accomplished via a metaphorical mapping that establishes a correspondence between the musical themeand human footsteps. The metaphorical correspondence is possible due to the high resemblance between the sound anddynamics of human footsteps and the highly rhythmic musical theme. In terms of the relationship of dependence betweenthe physical activity and the deployed rhythmic motive, the same observations made for example 2 apply here. One theone hand, human footsteps and the rhythmicmotive are inherently subsidiary to each other because the similarity is basedon experiential conflation, and the external contextual cues (such as the title and the knowledge of Ibsen’s story) reinforcethis identification. One the other hand, it could also be that the identification of one in terms of another is indirect and needsexternal cues (although it is also true that the matching is less arbitrary than those in examples 3 and 4). Its borderlinestatus is captured in Table 1.

Once the hearer establishes an experiential correlation between the musical theme and a series of footsteps, ametonymic expansion process allows RHYTHMIC THEME (or FOOTSTEP via metaphorical mapping) to stand forPERSON IN MOTION (as shown in Fig. 12). This connection allows us to establish correspondences between musicalprogression and human motor behaviors.

3.3.3. Via musical scaleMusical scale also contributes to deploy a program, although in a much more subtle way. Contrary to musical and

rhythmic motives, harmonic relationships are not always directly apprehensible to lay hearers. However, there are a few


Fig. 11. Double metonymy MUSICAL MOTIVE FOR MUSICAL THEME FOR CHARACTER (black simple arrows for metonymic mappings andmode-shift).

musical examples that can be analyzed in this fashion. A rather illustrative use of musical scale to create a broader extra-musical environment is to be found in ‘‘Laindenotte, Empress of the Pagodas’’, from Ravel’sMother Goose (example 7):

Ravel takes advantage of the pentatonic scale (in F#) to evoke an adequate Asian atmosphere to frame the story ofLaindenotte. A pentatonic scale is a five notes per octave musical scale which provides the harmonic base for most of theAsian traditional instruments.11 In the example under scrutiny, Ravel leaves the traditional heptatonic system (at the basisof the rest of the pieces inMother Goose) and productively exploits the centrality of the pentatonic scale to Asia in order toconstruct a vision of the non-Western world and its inhabitants. This strategy is acknowledged by scholars such as Locke(2011:217), who claims that the incorporation of ‘‘distinctive scales, harmonies, orchestral colors and other features thathad previously been associated with exotic realms’’ are compositional techniques used to evoke an image of ‘‘exoticotherness’’ (Locke, 1991:261). More specifically, Locke (2011:228) identifies the pentatonic scale, especially focusing onthe intervals of fourths and minor thirds, and rhythmic figures that are more impressions than melodic as the mostrecurrent compositional techniques to evoke the Far East12 (see Fig. 13).

3.3.4. Via musical keyLet’s turn now our attention to the use of musical key in relation to metonymy. Consider the following extract (example 8)

from Chrissochoidis and Huck’s (2011:65) analysis of Wagner’s Lohengrin:

11 To mention but a few, the major pentatonic scale is the basic scale of the music of China and the music of Mongolia; in turn, the Japaneseshakuhachi flute plays a minor pentatonic scale.12 Other well-known examples are Debussy’s Pagodes and Saint-Saëns’ Samson and Dalila.


[(Fig._13)TD$FIG]

Fig. 13. Metonymy PENTATONIC SCALE FORASIA in ‘‘Laindenotte, Empress of the Pagodas’’, from Ravel’sMother Goose (black simple arrowfor metonymic mappings and mode-shift).

[(Fig._12)TD$FIG]

Fig. 12. RHYTHMIC MOTIVE FOR PERSON (IN MOTION) multimodal metonymy in ‘‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’’ from Grieg’s Peer Gynt(black simple arrows for metonymic mappings and mode-shift).

(8)
Choiceof keyalsounderscores the conjugal state of each couple,which restsonbeliefs of trust and fidelity. Elsa’sA-flatmajor is the closest possible to Lohengrin’s A major yet stands the furthest away in the circle of fifths, the half-tonefriction between the two tonal plateaus projecting Wagner’s core idea of the impossibility of a human--divine union.
It becomes evident from this paragraph that the authors ascribe a metonymic relationship between each key and theircorresponding opera character: A major stands for Lohengrin, whereas A-flat major stands for his beloved Elsa (Fig. 14).MUSICAL KEY FORPERSON thus contributes to the proper identification of each of the characters involved in the scene.Although the attribution of a key to an opera character is a rather discretionary decision on the part of the composer, itmakes the characters and their corresponding musical key become dependent on each other for the identification to takeplace.

Curiously enough, this example could also be analyzed from the point of view of metaphorical correspondences. In thisregard, the structural relationship between both musical keys (close in the pentagram but far away in the circle of fifths) isput in correspondence with the relationship between the lovers (emotionally close but physically distant) through thePEOPLE ARE MUSICAL KEYS metaphor. Wagner plays with this idea later on in the opera, when he makes Lohengrin’sthememodulate from his key (AMajor) to Elsa’s key (A flat Major). This unison aria could reflect a physical union, once thatLohengrin has abandoned his divine status.

The ambivalence of the MUSICAL KEY FOR PERSON and PEOPLE ARE MUSICAL KEYS metaphors to account forthis example could obey to genre specificity. Given the length and complexity of Wagner’s musical work, the properunderstanding of the extra-musical narrative could be accomplished in two steps: (1) a metonymic mapping facilitates the


Fig. 14. MUSICAL KEY FOR PERSON metonymy in Wagner’s Lohengrin (black simple arrows for metonymic mappings and mode-shift).

identification of the protagonists in terms of a key; and then (2) a metaphor helps to develop the psychologicalcharacterization of these protagonists and the events they take part in by means of the mapping of the structuralrelationship between keys onto the lovers’ relationship.

3.4. Multiple source-in-target metonymies

The previous discussion of examples 5--8 has revealed that different elements of a certain musical theme (namely,musical motive, rhythmic theme, scale and key) can provide access via metonymic expansion to the most-encompassingdomain. However, it may well happen that several of these musical elements are simultaneously activated throughmultimodal manifestations and metonymically projected onto the extra-musical narrative. Multiple source-in-targetmetonymies (Pérez Hernández, 2013, in application to illocutionary speech acts) challenge the traditional version ofmetonymy as a singular mapping from a single source subdomain onto the corresponding target domain for which itstands.

One revealing case of study is that of sound logos. A sound logo is a short distinctive melody or sequence of soundsplayed at the beginning or ending of a commercial. Sound logos are increasingly becoming a vehicle to convey amemorable message to targeted consumers, taking advantage of the powerful memory sense of music. They oftencombine with textual and/or visual logos in order to reinforce the recognition of a brand. For the sake of illustration,consider the Nokia13 basic tune (example 9a). Themost recent cellular phones display more sophisticated versions of thetune, including harmonic background or real instrument performance (e.g., by a piano, as in example 9b).

The conglomerate nature of brands makes it possible for individual brand elements to stand for the brand either inisolation or in combination. In the case of Nokia, BASIC TUNE, PIANO TUNE, and LOGO (a combination of text andvisuals, in terms of the use of a specific typographic font) are equally viable source domains to stand for the moreencompassing domain BRAND (Fig. 15). The higher the number of brand elements (in this case, tunes, name andtypographic traits) that get activated simultaneously, the easiest the process of brand recognition will be.

In order to survey an equivalent conceptual mechanism in classical music, the notion of leitmotif arises as crucial. Thetechnique is notably associated with the operas of RichardWagner (although the notion is derived from Berlioz’s idée fixe,as mentioned in section 3.2). By way of reminder, a leitmotif is a musical term referring to a short, constantly recurringmusical phrase associated with a particular person, place, or idea. The motive should be carefully designed in order to

13 Both the Nokia tune and logo (see Fig. 15) are copyright of Nokia Corporation and here used and reproduced with permission of Nokia.


Fig. 15. Multiple source-in target metonymy BASIC TUNE/PIANO TUNE/LOGO FOR BRAND (NOKIA) (black simple arrows for metonymicmappings and mode-shift).

retain its identity even if it is modified on subsequent appearances in terms of rhythm, harmony, orchestration oraccompaniment.

In line with our previous analysis, a leitmotif (either based on melody, rhythm, harmony or a combination of the three)could be well studied from the perspective of the examples in section 3.3 as a metonymic source domain that grantsaccess to the target domain for which it stands for, in the form of the metonymy LEITMOTIF FOR PERSON/EVENT/etc.

Interestingly enough, there are also instances where one person or extra-musical event is expressed through avariable number of different leitmotifs. Cone (2009:80--81) identifies up to three different leitmotifs referring to Siegmund’ssword in The Ring of the Nibelungs. In example 10a, Wotan invokes for the first time the sword at the end of TheRhinegold: ‘‘So grüss ich die Burg, sicher vor Bang’ undGrau’n’’ (‘‘Thus I greet the castle, safe from fear and dread’’). Lateron at the beginning of The Valkyries, this leitmotif is recovered in Sigmund’s vocal line as he reflects on the promisedsword (example 10b): ‘‘Ein Schwert verhiess mir der Vater, ich fänd’ es in höchster Noth’’ (‘‘My father promised me asword, which I would find in my greatest need’’). The Sword is brought up a third time at the end of the first act of TheValkyrieswhen Sigmund pulls it out from Hunding’s house tree and names it ‘‘Nothung’’ (or ‘‘needful’’, given that this is theweapon that he needs for his forthcoming fight with Hunding) (example 10c).

Notwithstanding obvious differences in terms of rhythm, melody and harmony, the fact that these three leitmotifs have incommon (1) the falling octave and (2) the triad-based structure following the falling octave makes them eligiblesubdomains to stand for the more encompassing domain SWORD (Fig. 16).

Interestingly enough, the Sword leitmotif harmonic structure (major triad arppegiation) is also present in the Rhine andMother Earth leitmotifs, thereby serving as a cognitively economical point of access to these three wider domains.Similarly, the felicitous coincidence in the brass instrumentation of both Nothung and Rhine leitmotifs respectively points


Fig. 16. Multiple source-in-target metonymy LEITMOTIF 1/LEITMOTIF 2/LEITMOTIF 3 FOR SWORD in Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelungs(black simple arrows for metonymic mappings and mode-shift).

toward the source of the metal with which the sword is forged and the nature of the Rhinegold, respectively. The greatercontext of the opera sheds light on the complex and intertwined connections between leitmotifs that, in the end, musicallylink the sword to its source and physical material. It is worth mentioning that these links are also of metonymic nature:MAJOR TRIAD ARPPEGIATION FOR NOTHUNG/RHINE/EARTH and BRASS FOR NOTHUNG/RHINEGOLD.

4. Conclusions

The study of examples of programmusic reveals that the process of meaning (re)construction can be reduced to a finiteset of patterns of conceptual integration and conceptual interaction. The major claim of this paper is that meaning (re)construction is a two-step process where the specific set of conceptual integration patterns structuring the multimodalmanifestation triggers an array of cognitive operations at the conceptual level necessary for the inferential task to takeplace. In particular, I have focused on the patterns of conceptual disintegration that pave the way to the activation ofmetonymic reasoning (in isolation or in combination with other conceptual mechanisms).

A combined approach to the study of meaning (re)construction proves efficient to cover in finer detail a series ofdeficiencies found in CBT and CMyT. For instance, it goes beyond CBT inasmuch as it provides a clear-cut distinctionbetween the product (multimodal expression) and the process (cognitive operation) of disintegration. Furthermore, thetaxonomy provided by the MCIM proves relevant to detect different instantiations of conceptual disintegration. As shownin Table 1, two variables have been offered to classify different types of ‘‘disintegrated’’ conceptual packages. Accordingto the degree of integration, a difference has been established between cases of substitution, examples 1--4, andfragmentation, examples 5--10, which otherwise would have been considered equivalent examples of selective projectionin CBT. The second variable is the kind of dependency between the represented input and the whole domain to which itbelongs (absent in CBT). It has been claimed that it becomes crucial to further classify cases of conceptual disintegration:for instance, examples 1--4 would be considered equivalent from a CBT-oriented account since they all render instancesof conceptual disintegration. However, it has been demonstrated that they differ in the relationship of dependencybetween the present input and the domain to which it refers: in examples 1 and 2, they share a relationship of inherentdependence that makes the identification easy and direct; by contrast, text and music become ad hoc dependent on eachother in examples 3 and 4, thereby steering the hearer to rely on extra-contextual information to establish the connectionwith originally independent inputs.

The two-stepwise approach to meaning (re)construction also advances our knowledge on musical metonymy. Forinstance, it helps to build an index of multimodal metonymies that share a common underlying reconstruction process(metonymic mappings) triggered by different multimodal products (patterns of disintegration). As a result, the followinginventory of multimodal metonymies is offered (see Table 2).

The application of the theoretical postulates of this paper to the non-verbal part of communication proves efficient in atleast two additional respects. On one hand, it builds a stronger theory of conceptual integration and completes CMyT,since both have traditionally been restricted to the study of linguistic examples. Complementarily, it also advances thetheory of multimodal metonymy, which so far has only attracted scarce attention, and exclusively within the visual realm(cf. Forceville, 2009b).


Table 2Summary of the types of metonymy discussed in this paper.

Conceptual operation

Domains and mappings Schematic representation* Example

Multimodal metonymic echoing

Subdomain: a’ (a musical item that imitates or echoes a sound from the real world, a).

Matrix domain: A (the real producer of the sound).

The metonymic subdomain and the matrix domain are partially or totally rendered in different modes.

*(black arrow for metonymic mapping and mode-shift; interrupted-line white arrow for echoic operation)

a: chirp of birds

a’:

A: Birds

Multimodal metaphtonymy

Subdomain: a (a central feature of a real world element).

Matrix Domain: A (the element). This matrix domain becomes the source of a metaphor used to think and reason about the musical piece, which is the target.

The metonymic subdomain, the matrix domain/metaphoric source and the metaphoric target are partially or totally rendered in different modes.

*(black arrow for metonymic mapping and mode-shift; white arrow for metaphoric mapping and mode-shift)

a: constant and regular motion

A: spinning wheel

B: understanding of

as a spinning wheel

Multimodal metonymic cueing

Subdomain: a’ (a musical item that cues a central feature of a real world element).

Matrix Domain: A (the element).


*(black arrow for metonymic mapping and mode-shift; interrupted-line white arrow for cueing operation)

a: the beloved

a’:

A: Life of the artist (Hector Berlioz)

Multimodal source-in target metonymy

Subdomain: a (a musical element).

Matrix Domain: A (the character the musical element represents).


*(black arrow for metonymic mapping and mode-shift)

a:

A: Papageno

Multimodal multiple source-in target metonymy

Subdomain1: a

1 (a musical

element)Subdomain

2: a

2 (a musical

element)Subdomain

3: a

3 (a musical

element)

Matrix Domain: A (the character the musical element represents).

The metonymic subdomains and the matrix domain are partially or totally rendered in different modes.

*(black arrows for metonymic mappings and mode-shift)

a1:

a2:

a3:

A: Siegmund’s Sword

a’a

A

echoes

a

A B

a

A

A

a1

a2

a3

a’a

A

cues


Further research should test the compatibility of this approach to multimodal meaning (re)construction practices inlinguistic environments (in a reverse application of the equipollence hypothesis). Additionally, other strategies of meaningmaking should be investigated (such as that wherein patterns of conceptual integration trigger metaphoric mappings, ashinted in Author, 2014), in order to verify whether the two-stepwise model is a feasible and efficient approach to every kindof meaning construction operations.

Acknowledgements

I am deeply indebted to Lorena Pérez Hernández and an anonymous reviewer for their insightful critical remarks, whichhave notably helped me to improve this manuscript at different stages. The responsibility for any remaining mistakes issolely mine. This research has been carried out with the support of a FPU grant AP2010-5172 (Spanish Ministry ofEducation). I am also grateful to Nokia Corporation for granting permission to reproduce their tune and logo.

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Paula Pérez-Sobrino is currently a PhD student at the University of La Rioja (Spain), where she is about to finish her doctoral thesis with thesupport of and FPU scholarship (Ministry of Education, Spain). Her main field of interest is multimodal metaphor across different genres, such asprinted advertising, commercials, music and cinema. She is also concerned with the study of Conceptual Theory of Metonymy and other cognitiveoperations involving text, music and sound.





























meaning construction in verbomusical environments: conceptual disintegration and metonymy

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