Humanities & Social Sciences 10 (2016 9) 2315-2327 ~ ~ ~ УДК 811.111 The Functioning Mechanism of Attributive Metonymy in English Fictional Discourse Elena V. Anashkina and Olimpiada F. Ivanova* National Research University “Higher School of Economics (HSE)”, 20 Myasnitskaya Str., Moscow, 101000, Russia Received 10.05.2016, received in revised form 25.08.2016, accepted 14.09.2016 This paper deals with discursive attributive metonymy. <...> This linguistic phenomenon is clearly opposed to lexical metonymy as it occurs only in discourse and as such has some distinguishing features: nonfrequency, denotation of a situation, semantic discord between the modifier and the modified noun, and expressiveness. <...> This research attempts to provide a comprehensive analysis of the functioning mechanism of discursive attributive metonymy. <...> The findings reveal that metonymic transferences in adjectives are based on different types of contiguity between objects and their attributes and in some cases such contiguity is contextually determined. <...> The functioning mechanism involves asymmetric relations between syntactic and semantic functions of an attribute as well as a syntagmatic shift. <...> Also, in attributive metonymy there occurs recategorization, i.e. adjectives sometimes change their lexicogrammatical class. <...> In terms of cognitive linguistics, the functioning mechanism is based on mapping of different mental spaces resulting in the conceptual integration and blending. <...> In fictional discourse attributive metonymy is a means to create new occasional meanings and expressiveness. <...> Introduction In linguistics there is a large body of works on attributive metonymy (Novikov, 1996; Lifshits, 2001; Merzliakova, 2003; Sandakova, 2004), although the attention it has received is much less than that for metonymy of nouns. <...> Meanwhile, adjectives, due to their attributive nature, open up ample opportunity for metonymic denominations. © Siberian Federal University. <...> Consequently, the mechanism of metonymic transference involves both adjectives and nouns Elena V. Anashkina, Olimpiada F. Ivanova. <...> Attributive metonymy is an adjective –plus- noun combination where the adjective syntactically relates to the modified noun but semantically refers to another noun which is either represented in a given context or just implied while the relations between the both nouns are based on contiguity of different types (Arutiunova, 1990, p. 301). <...> So far there is no comprehensive analysis of this phenomenon in English fictional discourse though certain aspects <...>