“HIDING BEHIND BOLOGNA”
METONYMY, METAPHOR AND CONCEPTUAL BLURRING IN THE BOLOGNA PROCESS DISCOURSE
Keywords:
Bologna, Bologna process discourse, metonymy, metaphor, cognitive linguisticsAbstract
This paper presents a cognitive linguistic account of metonymic and metaphoric meaning construction in the English language discourse related to the ongoing higher education reform process in Europe widely known as “the Bologna process”. The analysis of the non-literal uses of the toponym Bologna in the pertinent discourse shows that the conceptualization and the discursive construction of the contemporary European higher education are significantly shaped by metonymic mappings in which Bologna serves as a “catch-all” metonymic vehicle with a range of often indeterminate target concepts, and by metaphoric mappings in which the conceptual complex bologna (for x) is structured in terms of various (and often inconsistent) source domains (motion, space, building, machine, plant, person, organized group, economy/trade, food/cooking), which results in unclear referential meaning and yet predominantly negative associative meaning. The theoretical considerations concern the benefits of the interdisciplinary dialogue between cognitive linguistic, (critical) discourse analysis, and relevance-theoretic approaches to meaning.
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