The monograph presents new findings and perspectives in the study of variation in metonymy
both theoretical and methodological. Theoretically it sheds light on metonymy from an
onomasiological perspective which helps to discover the different conceptual or lexical
pathways through which a concept or a group of concepts has been designated by going back to
the source concepts. In addition it broadens the perspective of Cognitive Linguistics research
on metonymy by looking into how metonymic conceptualization and usage may vary along various
dimensions. Three case studies explore significant variation in metonymy across different
languages time periods genres and social lects. Methodologically the monograph responds to
the call in Cognitive Linguistics to adopt usage-based empirical methodologies. The case
studies show that quantification and statistical techniques constitute essential parts of an
empirical analysis based on corpus data. The empirical findings demonstrate the essential need
to extend research on metonymy in a variationist Cognitive Linguistics direction by studying
metonymy s cultural historical and social-lectal variation.
