The Function of Metaphor and Metonymy in the Variation of the Words' Meaning

According to the theories of contemporary cognitive linguistics and w ith the polysemous words in the modern Chinese language as a research object, th e paper studies the variation of the meanings of words. The variation of the mea nings of words in the language variation can be divided into the similarity relation and relevance relation, which are created by metaphor and metonymy.