本书的精华应该是从转喻的角度来研究“句式语法”现象我们知道，自G.Frege提出语言组构原则以来，似乎语言的构造过程就是一加一等于二。其实不然。当代句式语法认为，假如一句话内在五个词语，按组构原则的说法，运用这五个词构成的语句的语义理所当然地应该是这五个词的意义加上它们彼此之间的语法意义的总和。然而按照句式语法的观点，除了这两方面外，这五个词语的安排顺序不有特定的句式意义，即传统语法所说的句型意义。当句型意义与语句内部的关键词语的意义在交际上发生冲突时，就会产生某种形式上的调整，而这种调整是通过所谓的“压制”来完成的传统语法并未考虑到这一点，而当代句式语法考虑到了，从而增加了语法研究的细度。
本书用“脚本”的概念分析了宏观言语行为的操作状态。传统的言语行为分直接和间接两种，但总嫌零散、欠系统性和复叠太多，即所分出的类别这间的界线并不十分清楚，一类中的部分言语行为可以出现在另一类中，等等。

序
前言
Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1 Historical Preamble
1.2 Metonymy in Classical Rhetoric
1.3 Current Interests in Metonymy
1.4 The Framework of the Current Study
Chapter 2 Metonymy: From the Perspective of Structualism and Pragmatics
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Previous Pragmatic Accounts of Metonymy
2.3 Structuralist View onMetonymy
2.4 Grice's Theory of Implicature
2.5 Some Problems for Gricean Aproach to Metonymy
2.6 Relevance-theoretic Account of Metonymy
2.7 Summary
Chapter 3 Metonymy and Thought
3.1 Introduction
3.2 The Definition of Metonymy
3.3 Metaphor and Metonymy
3.4 Metonymy and Thought
3.5 The Operational Mechanism of Metonymy
3.6 Summary
Chapter 4 Metonymy:from the Perspective of Cognition
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Metonymy is a Conceptual Phenomenon
4.3 Metonymy is a Cognitive Process
4.4 Metonymy Operates within the Same Idealized Cognitive Model
4.5 ICM and Metonymy's Generation and Understanding
4.6 Classifications of Metonymies
4.7 Summary
Chapter 5 Metonymy's Impact on Linguistic Structure
Chapter 6 Speech Act Metonymy and Pragematic Inferencing
Chapter 7 cONCLUSION
Bibliography
Acknowledgements