The 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: non-frequency, denotation of a situation, semantic discord between the modifier and the modified noun, expressiveness. The 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 lexico-grammatical 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.