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Metonymy

March 08, 2023

Not to be confused with meronymy or meronomy.

Metonymy (/mɪˈtɒnɪmi, -nəmi, mɛ-/)[1][2][3] is a figure of speech in which a concept is referred to by the name of something closely associated with that thing or concept.[4]

The Pentagon (pictured), the headquarters building of the United States Department of Defense, is a common metonym used to refer to the U.S. military and its leadership.

Etymology

The words metonymy and metonym come from Ancient Greek: μετωνυμία, metōnymía 'a change of name', from μετά, metá 'after, post, beyond' and -ωνυμία, -ōnymía, a suffix that names figures of speech, from ὄνυμα, ónyma or ὄνομα, ónoma 'name'.[5]

Background

Metonymy and related figures of speech are common in everyday speech and writing. Synecdoche and metalepsis are considered specific types of metonymy. Polysemy, the capacity for a word or phrase to have multiple meanings, sometimes results from relations of metonymy. Both metonymy and metaphor involve the substitution of one term for another.[6] In metaphor, this substitution is based on some specific analogy between two things, whereas in metonymy the substitution is based on some understood association or contiguity.[7][8]

American literary theorist Kenneth Burke considers metonymy as one of four "master tropes": metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche and irony. He discusses them in particular ways in his book A Grammar of Motives. Whereas Roman Jakobson argued that the fundamental dichotomy in trope was between metaphor and metonymy, Burke argues that the fundamental dichotomy is between irony and synecdoche, which he also describes as the dichotomy between dialectic and representation, or again between reduction and perspective.[9]

In addition to its use in everyday speech, metonymy is a figure of speech in some poetry and in much rhetoric. Greek and Latin scholars of rhetoric made significant contributions to the study of metonymy.

Meaning relationships

Metonymy takes many different forms.

Synecdoche uses a part to refer to the whole, or the whole to refer to the part.[10][11][12]

Metalepsis uses a familiar word or a phrase in a new context.[13] For example, "lead foot" may describe a fast driver; lead is heavy, and a heavy foot on the accelerator causes a vehicle to go fast.[14] The figure of speech is a "metonymy of a metonymy".[13]

Many cases of polysemy originate as metonyms: for example, "chicken" means the meat as well as the animal; "crown" for the object, as well as the institution.[15][16]

Metaphor and metonymy

Main article: Metaphor and metonymy

Metonymy works by the contiguity (association) between two concepts, whereas the term "metaphor" is based upon their analogous similarity. When people use metonymy, they do not typically wish to transfer qualities from one referent to another as they do with metaphor.[17] There is nothing press-like about reporters or crown-like about a monarch, but "the press" and "the crown" are both common metonyms.

Some uses of figurative language may be understood as both metonymy and metaphor; for example, the relationship between "a crown" and a "king" could be interpreted metaphorically (i.e., the king, like his gold crown, could be seemingly stiff yet ultimately malleable, over-ornate, and consistently immobile). However, in the phrase "lands belonging to the crown", the word "crown" is definitely a metonymy. The reason is that monarchs by and large indeed wear a crown, physically. In other words, there is a pre-existent link between "crown" and "monarchy". On the other hand, when Ghil'ad Zuckermann argues that the Israeli language is a "phoenicuckoo cross with some magpie characteristics", he is definitely using metaphors.[18]: 4  There is no physical link between a language and a bird. The reason the metaphors "phoenix" and "cuckoo" are used is that on the one hand hybridic "Israeli" is based on Hebrew, which, like a phoenix, rises from the ashes; and on the other hand, hybridic "Israeli" is based on Yiddish, which like a cuckoo, lays its egg in the nest of another bird, tricking it to believe that it is its own egg. Furthermore, the metaphor "magpie" is employed because, according to Zuckermann, hybridic "Israeli" displays the characteristics of a magpie, "stealing" from languages such as Arabic and English.[18]: 4–6 

Two examples using the term "fishing" help clarify the distinction.[19] The phrase "to fish pearls" uses metonymy, drawing from "fishing" the idea of taking things from the ocean. What is carried across from "fishing fish" to "fishing pearls" is the domain of metonymy. In contrast, the metaphorical phrase "fishing for information" transfers the concept of fishing into a new domain. If someone is "fishing" for information, we do not imagine that the person is anywhere near the ocean; rather, we transpose elements of the action of fishing (waiting, hoping to catch something that cannot be seen, probing) into a new domain (a conversation). Thus, metaphor works by presenting a target set of meanings and using them to suggest a similarity between items, actions, or events in two domains, whereas metonymy calls up or references a specific domain (here, removing items from the sea).

Sometimes, metaphor and metonymy may both be at work in the same figure of speech, or one could interpret a phrase metaphorically or metonymically. For example, the phrase "lend me your ear" could be analyzed in a number of ways. One could imagine the following interpretations:

  • Analyze "ear" metonymically first – "ear" means "attention" (because people use ears to pay attention to each other's speech). Now, when we hear the phrase "Talk to him; you have his ear", it symbolizes he will listen to you or that he will pay attention to you. Another phrase "lending an ear (attention)", we stretch the base meaning of "lend" (to let someone borrow an object) to include the "lending" of non-material things (attention), but, beyond this slight extension of the verb, no metaphor is at work.
  • Imagine the whole phrase literally – imagine that the speaker literally borrows the listener's ear as a physical object (and the person's head with it). Then the speaker has temporary possession of the listener's ear, so the listener has granted the speaker temporary control over what the listener hears. The phrase "lend me your ear" is interpreted to metaphorically mean that the speaker wants the listener to grant the speaker temporary control over what the listener hears.
  • First, analyze the verb phrase "lend me your ear" metaphorically to mean "turn your ear in my direction," since it is known that, literally lending a body part is nonsensical. Then, analyze the motion of ears metonymically – we associate "turning ears" with "paying attention," which is what the speaker wants the listeners to do.

It is difficult to say which analysis above most closely represents the way a listener interprets the expression, and it is possible that different listeners analyse the phrase in different ways, or even in different ways at different times. Regardless, all three analyses yield the same interpretation. Thus, metaphor and metonymy, though different in their mechanism, work together seamlessly.[20]

Examples

Main article: List of metonyms

Here are some broad kinds of relationships where metonymy is frequently used:

  • Containment: When one thing contains another, it can frequently be used metonymically, as when "dish" is used to refer not to a plate but to the food it contains, or as when the name of a building is used to refer to the entity it contains, as when "the White House" or "the Pentagon" are used to refer to the Administration of the United States, or the U.S. Department of Defense, respectively.
  • A physical item, place, or body part used to refer to a related concept, such as "the bench" for the judicial profession, "stomach" or "belly" for appetite or hunger, "mouth" for speech, being "in diapers" for infancy, "palate" for taste, "the altar" or "the aisle" for marriage, "hand" for someone's responsibility for something ("he had a hand in it"), "head" or "brain" for mind or intelligence, or "nose" for concern about someone else's affairs, (as in "keep your nose out of my business"). A reference to Timbuktu, as in "from here to Timbuktu," usually means a place or idea is too far away or mysterious. Metonymy of objects or body parts for concepts is common in dreams.[21]
  • Tools/instruments: Often a tool is used to signify the job it does or the person who does the job, as in the phrase "his Rolodex is long and valuable" (referring to the Rolodex instrument, which keeps contact business cards, meaning he has a lot of contacts and knows many people). Also "the press" (referring to the printing press), or as in the proverb, "The pen is mightier than the sword."
  • Product for process: This is a type of metonymy where the product of the activity stands for the activity itself. For example, in "The book is moving right along," the book refers to the process of writing or publishing.[22]
  • Punctuation marks often stand metonymically for a meaning expressed by the punctuation mark. For example, "He's a big question mark to me" indicates that something is unknown.[23] In the same way, 'period' can be used to emphasise that a point is concluded or not to be challenged.
  • Synecdoche: A part of something is often used for the whole, as when people refer to "head" of cattle or assistants are referred to as "hands." An example of this is the Canadian dollar, referred to as the loonie for the image of a bird on the one-dollar coin. United States one hundred-dollar bills are often referred to as "Bens", "Benjamins" or "Franklins" because they bear a portrait of Benjamin Franklin. Also, the whole of something is used for a part, as when people refer to a municipal employee as "the city" or police officers as "the law".
  •  
    Fleet Street (where most British national newspapers previously operated) is used as a metonym for the British press
    Toponyms: A country's capital city or some location within the city is frequently used as a metonym for the country's government, such as Washington, D.C., in the United States; Ottawa in Canada; Rome in Italy; Paris in France; Tokyo in Japan; New Delhi in India; London in the United Kingdom; Moscow in Russia etc. Similarly, other important places, such as Wall Street, Madison Avenue, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, Vegas, and Detroit are commonly used to refer to the industries that are located there (finance, advertising, high technology, entertainment, gambling, and motor vehicles, respectively). Such usage may persist even when the industries in question have moved elsewhere, for example, Fleet Street continues to be used as a metonymy for the British national press, though many national publications are no longer headquartered on the street of that name.[24]

Places and institutions

A place is often used as a metonym for a government or other official institutions, for example, Brussels for the institutions of the European Union, The Hague for the International Court of Justice or International Criminal Court, Nairobi for the government of Kenya, the Kremlin for the Russian presidency, Number 10 or Whitehall for the prime minister of the United Kingdom, the White House and Capitol Hill for the executive and legislative branches, respectively, of the United States federal government, or Foggy Bottom for the U.S. State Department. Other names of addresses or locations can become convenient shorthand names in international diplomacy, allowing commentators and insiders to refer impersonally and succinctly to foreign ministries with impressive and imposing names as (for example) the Quai d'Orsay, the Wilhelmstrasse, the Kremlin, and the Porte.

A place (or places) can represent an entire industry: for instance, Wall Street, used metonymically, can stand for the entire U.S. financial and corporate banking sector[25] and Hollywood - for the U.S. film industry and the people associated with it. The High Street (of which there are over 5,000 in Britain) is a term commonly used to refer to the entire British retail sector.[26] Common nouns and phrases can also be metonyms: "red tape" can stand for bureaucracy, whether or not that bureaucracy uses actual red tape to bind documents. In Commonwealth realms, The Crown is a metonym for the state in all its aspects.[27]

In recent Israeli usage, the term "Balfour" came to refer to the Israeli Prime Minister's residence, located on Balfour Street in Jerusalem, to all the streets around it where demonstrations frequently take place, and also to the Prime Minister and his family who live in the residence.[28]

Rhetoric in ancient history

Western culture studied poetic language and deemed it to be rhetoric. A. Al-Sharafi supports this concept in his book Textual Metonymy, "Greek rhetorical scholarship at one time became entirely poetic scholarship."[29] Philosophers and rhetoricians thought that metaphors were the primary figurative language used in rhetoric. Metaphors served as a better means to attract the audience's attention because the audience had to read between the lines in order to get an understanding of what the speaker was trying to say. Others did not think of metonymy as a good rhetorical method because metonymy did not involve symbolism. Al-Sharafi explains, "This is why they undermined practical and purely referential discourse because it was seen as banal and not containing anything new, strange or shocking."[29]

Greek scholars contributed to the definition of metonymy. For example, Isocrates worked to define the difference between poetic language and non-poetic language by saying that, "Prose writers are handicapped in this regard because their discourse has to conform to the forms and terms used by the citizens and to those arguments which are precise and relevant to the subject-matter." In other words, Isocrates proposes here that metaphor is a distinctive feature of poetic language because it conveys the experience of the world afresh and provides a kind of defamiliarisation in the way the citizens perceive the world.[29] Democritus described metonymy by saying, "Metonymy, that is the fact that words and meaning change."[29] Aristotle discussed different definitions of metaphor, regarding one type as what we know to be metonymy today.

Latin scholars also had an influence on metonymy. The treatise Rhetorica ad Herennium states metonymy as, "the figure which draws from an object closely akin or associated an expression suggesting the object meant, but not called by its own name."[29] The author describes the process of metonymy to us saying that we first figure out what a word means. We then figure out that word's relationship with other words. We understand and then call the word by a name that it is associated with. "Perceived as such then metonymy will be a figure of speech in which there is a process of abstracting a relation of proximity between two words to the extent that one will be used in place of another."[29] Cicero viewed metonymy as more of a stylish rhetorical method and described it as being based on words, but motivated by style.[citation needed]

Jakobson, structuralism and realism

Metonymy became important in French structuralism through the work of Roman Jakobson. In his 1956 essay "The Metaphoric and Metonymic Poles", Jakobson relates metonymy to the linguistic practice of [syntagmatic] combination and to the literary practice of realism. He explains:

The primacy of the metaphoric process in the literary schools of Romanticism and symbolism has been repeatedly acknowledged, but it is still insufficiently realized that it is the predominance of metonymy which underlies and actually predetermines the so-called 'realistic' trend, which belongs to an intermediary stage between the decline of Romanticism and the rise of symbolism and is opposed to both. Following the path of contiguous relationships, the realistic author metonymically digresses from the plot to the atmosphere and from the characters to the setting in space and time. He is fond of synecdochic details. In the scene of Anna Karenina's suicide Tolstoy's artistic attention is focused on the heroine's handbag; and in War and Peace the synecdoches "hair on the upper lip" or "bare shoulders" are used by the same writer to stand for the female characters to whom these features belong.[30]

Jakobson's theories were important for Claude Lévi-Strauss, Roland Barthes, Jacques Lacan, and others.[31]

Dreams can use metonyms.[32]

Metonyms and art

Metonyms can also be wordless. For example, Roman Jakobson[33] argued that cubist art relied heavily on nonlinguistic metonyms, while surrealist art relied more on metaphors.

Lakoff and Turner[34] argued that all words are metonyms: "Words stand for the concepts they express." Some artists have used actual words as metonyms in their paintings. For example, Miró's 1925 painting "Photo: This is the Color of My Dreams" has the word "photo" to represent the image of his dreams. This painting comes from a series of paintings called peintures-poésies (paintings-poems) which reflect Miró's interest in dreams and the subconscious[35] and the relationship of words, images, and thoughts. Picasso, in his 1911 painting "Pipe Rack and Still Life on Table" inserts the word "Ocean" rather than painting an ocean: These paintings by Miró and Picasso are, in a sense, the reverse of a rebus: the word stands for the picture, instead of the picture standing for the word.

See also

 
Look up metonymy in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

References

Citations

  1. ^ "metonymy". Cambridge University Press. Retrieved 2017-06-17.
  2. ^ "metonym". The Chambers Dictionary (9th ed.). Chambers. 2003. ISBN 0-550-10105-5.
  3. ^ "Definition of metonymy | Dictionary.com". www.dictionary.com. Retrieved 2022-05-01.
  4. ^ "Metonymy Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster". Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Retrieved 2022-06-13.
  5. ^ Welsh, Alfred Hux; James Mickleborough Greenwood (1893). Studies in English Grammar: A Comprehensive Course for Grammar Schools, High Schools and Academies. New York City: Silver Burdett. p. 222.
  6. ^ Dirven, René; Pörings, Ralf (2002). Metaphor and Metonymy in Comparison and Contrast. Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-017373-4.
  7. ^ Wilber, Ken (2000). Sex, Ecology, Spirituality. Shambhala Publications. ISBN 978-0-8348-2108-8.
  8. ^ Tompkins, Penny; James Lawley. "Metonymy and Part-Whole Relationships". www.cleanlanguage.co.uk. Retrieved 19 December 2012.
  9. ^ Burke, Kenneth. (1945) A Grammar of Motives. New York: Prentice Hall Inc. pp. 503–09.
  10. ^ Dubois, Jacques; Mu, Groupe; Edeline, Francis; Klinkenberg, Jean-Marie (1981). A General Rhetoric. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 978-0-8018-2326-8.
  11. ^ Shaheen, Aaron (2020-06-25). Great War Prostheses in American Literature and Culture. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-885778-5.
  12. ^ "Metonymy - Examples and Definition of Metonymy". Literary Devices. 2020-08-12. Retrieved 2021-03-22.
  13. ^ a b Bloom, Harold (2003). A Map of Misreading. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-516221-9.
  14. ^ . Silva Rhetoricae. Archived from the original on 2013-08-16. Retrieved 2013-12-05.
  15. ^ Panther, Klaus-Uwe; Radden, Günter (1999-01-01). Metonymy in Language and Thought. John Benjamins Publishing. ISBN 978-90-272-2356-2.
  16. ^ Conference, Rhetoric Society of America; Smith, Michelle Christine; Warnick, Barbara (2010). The Responsibilities of Rhetoric. Waveland Press. ISBN 978-1-57766-623-3.
  17. ^ Chandler, Daniel. "Rhetorical Tropes". Semiotics for Beginners. Aberystwyth University. Retrieved 19 December 2012.
  18. ^ a b Zuckermann, Ghil'ad (2020). Revivalistics: From the Genesis of Israeli to Language Reclamation in Australia and Beyond. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199812790.
  19. ^ Example drawn from Dirven, 1996
  20. ^ Geeraerts, Dirk (2002). "The interaction of metaphor and metonymy in composite expressions" (PDF). In R. Dirven and R. Pörings (ed.). Metaphor and Metonymy in Comparison and Contrast. Walter de Gruyter. pp. 435–465. ISBN 978-3-11-017373-4. Retrieved 30 November 2013.
  21. ^ Blechner, M. J. (2018) The Mindbrain and Dreams. New York: Routledge.
  22. ^ Lakoff and Johnson 1999, p. 203
  23. ^ Lakoff and Johnson 1999, p. 245
  24. ^ Weinreb, Ben; Hibbert, Christopher; Keay, Julia; Keay, John (2008). The London Encyclopaedia. Pan MacMillan. p. 300. ISBN 978-1-4050-4924-5.
  25. ^ Gibbs, Raymond W. Jr. (1999). "Speaking and Thinking with Metonymy", in Pattern and Process: A Whiteheadian Perspective on Linguistics, ed. Klaus-Uwe Panther and Günter Radden. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing. pp. 61–76. ISBN 978-9027223562.
  26. ^ "What next for the high street?". Deloitte UK. Retrieved 25 June 2022.
  27. ^ Jackson, Michael D (2013), The Crown and Canadian Federalism, Toronto: Dundurn Press, p. 20, ISBN 9781459709898
  28. ^ "Thousands protest at Balfour, call on police not to repeat 'terror'" - a news item in The Jerusalem Post, August 30, 2020.
  29. ^ a b c d e f Al-Sharafi, Abdul Gabbar (2004). Textual Metonymy: A Semiotic Approach. ISBN 9781403938909.
  30. ^ Jakobson, Roman (1956). "The Metaphoric and Metonymic Poles". In Dirven, René; Pörings, Ralf (eds.). Metaphor and Metonymy in Comparison and Contrast (revised ed.). de Gruyter. pp. 41–48. ISBN 9783110173741. Retrieved 14 May 2016.
  31. ^ Dirven, René (2003). "Metonymy and Metaphor: Different Mental Strategies of Conceptualisation". In Dirven, René; Pörings, Ralf (eds.). Metaphor and Metonymy in Comparison and Contrast (revised ed.). de Gruyter. pp. 75–112. ISBN 9783110173741. Retrieved 14 May 2016.
  32. ^ Blechner, M. J. (2018) The Mindbrain and Dreams: An Exploration of Thinking, Dreaming, and Artistic Creation. New York: Routledge.
  33. ^ Jakobson, R. (1971) Selected Writings: Word and Language, Vol 2. The Hague: Mouton.
  34. ^ Lakoff, G. and Turner, M. (1989) More than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
  35. ^ Rowell, M. (1976) Joan Miró: Peinture – Poésie. Paris: Éditions de la différence.

Sources

  • Blank, Andreas (1997). Prinzipien des lexikalischen Bedeutungswandels am Beispiel der romanischen Sprachen. Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-093160-0.
  • Corbett, Edward P.J. (1998) [1971]. Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student (4th ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-511542-0.
  • Dirven, René (1999). "Conversion as a Conceptual Metonymy of Event Schemata". In K.U. Panther; G. Radden (eds.). Metonymy in Language and Thought. John Benjamins Publishing. pp. 275–288. ISBN 978-90-272-2356-2.
  • Fass, Dan (1997). Processing Metonymy and Metaphor. Ablex. ISBN 978-1-56750-231-2.
  • Grzega, Joachim (2004). Bezeichnungswandel: Wie, Warum, Wozu? Ein Beitrag zur englischen und allgemeinen Onomasiologie. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter [de]. ISBN 978-3-8253-5016-1.
  • Lakoff, George; Johnson, Mark (1999). Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought. Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-465-05674-3.
  • Somov, Georgij Yu. (2009). "Metonymy and its manifestation in visual artworks: Case study of late paintings by Bruegel the Elder". Semiotica. 2009 (174): 309–66. doi:10.1515/semi.2009.037. S2CID 170990814.
  • Smyth, Herbert Weir (1920). Greek Grammar. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. p. 680. ISBN 978-0-674-36250-5.
  • Warren, Beatrice (2006). Referential Metonymy. Publications of the Royal Society of Letters at Lund. Lund, Sweden: Almqvist & Wiksell International. ISBN 978-91-22-02148-3.

Further reading

  • Fass, Dan (1988). "Metonymy and metaphor: what's the difference?". Proceedings of the 12th conference on Computational linguistics. Vol. 1. pp. 177–81. doi:10.3115/991635.991671. ISBN 978-963-8431-56-1. S2CID 9557558.
  • Gaines, Charles (2003). "Reconsidering Metaphor/Metonymy: Art and the Suppression of Thought". No. 64.
  • Jakobson, Roman (1995) [1956]. "Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Disturbances". In Linda Waugh and Monique Monville-Burston (ed.). On Language. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-63536-4.
  • Lakoff, George (1980). Metaphors We Live By. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-46801-3.
  • Low, Graham (1999-02-11). "An Essay Is a Person". In Cameron, Lynne; Low, Graham (eds.). Researching and Applying Metaphor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 221–48. ISBN 978-0-521-64964-3.
  • Pérez-Sobrino, Paula (2014). "Meaning construction in verbomusical environments: Conceptual disintegration and metonymy" (PDF). Journal of Pragmatics. 70: 130–151. doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2014.06.008.
  • Peters, Wim (2003). "Metonymy as a cross-lingual phenomenon". Proceedings of the ACL 2003 Workshop on Lexicon and Figurative Language. 14: 1–9. doi:10.3115/1118975.1118976. S2CID 8267864.

March 08, 2023
metonymy, confused, with, meronymy, meronomy, figure, speech, which, concept, referred, name, something, closely, associated, with, that, thing, concept, pentagon, pictured, headquarters, building, united, states, department, defense, common, metonym, used, re. Not to be confused with meronymy or meronomy Metonymy m ɪ ˈ t ɒ n ɪ m i n e m i m ɛ 1 2 3 is a figure of speech in which a concept is referred to by the name of something closely associated with that thing or concept 4 The Pentagon pictured the headquarters building of the United States Department of Defense is a common metonym used to refer to the U S military and its leadership Contents 1 Etymology 2 Background 3 Meaning relationships 3 1 Metaphor and metonymy 3 2 Examples 3 2 1 Places and institutions 4 Rhetoric in ancient history 5 Jakobson structuralism and realism 6 Metonyms and art 7 See also 8 References 8 1 Citations 8 2 Sources 9 Further readingEtymology EditThe words metonymy and metonym come from Ancient Greek metwnymia metōnymia a change of name from meta meta after post beyond and wnymia ōnymia a suffix that names figures of speech from ὄnyma onyma or ὄnoma onoma name 5 Background EditMetonymy and related figures of speech are common in everyday speech and writing Synecdoche and metalepsis are considered specific types of metonymy Polysemy the capacity for a word or phrase to have multiple meanings sometimes results from relations of metonymy Both metonymy and metaphor involve the substitution of one term for another 6 In metaphor this substitution is based on some specific analogy between two things whereas in metonymy the substitution is based on some understood association or contiguity 7 8 American literary theorist Kenneth Burke considers metonymy as one of four master tropes metaphor metonymy synecdoche and irony He discusses them in particular ways in his book A Grammar of Motives Whereas Roman Jakobson argued that the fundamental dichotomy in trope was between metaphor and metonymy Burke argues that the fundamental dichotomy is between irony and synecdoche which he also describes as the dichotomy between dialectic and representation or again between reduction and perspective 9 In addition to its use in everyday speech metonymy is a figure of speech in some poetry and in much rhetoric Greek and Latin scholars of rhetoric made significant contributions to the study of metonymy Meaning relationships EditMetonymy takes many different forms Synecdoche uses a part to refer to the whole or the whole to refer to the part 10 11 12 Metalepsis uses a familiar word or a phrase in a new context 13 For example lead foot may describe a fast driver lead is heavy and a heavy foot on the accelerator causes a vehicle to go fast 14 The figure of speech is a metonymy of a metonymy 13 Many cases of polysemy originate as metonyms for example chicken means the meat as well as the animal crown for the object as well as the institution 15 16 Metaphor and metonymy Edit Main article Metaphor and metonymy Metonymy works by the contiguity association between two concepts whereas the term metaphor is based upon their analogous similarity When people use metonymy they do not typically wish to transfer qualities from one referent to another as they do with metaphor 17 There is nothing press like about reporters or crown like about a monarch but the press and the crown are both common metonyms Some uses of figurative language may be understood as both metonymy and metaphor for example the relationship between a crown and a king could be interpreted metaphorically i e the king like his gold crown could be seemingly stiff yet ultimately malleable over ornate and consistently immobile However in the phrase lands belonging to the crown the word crown is definitely a metonymy The reason is that monarchs by and large indeed wear a crown physically In other words there is a pre existent link between crown and monarchy On the other hand when Ghil ad Zuckermann argues that the Israeli language is a phoenicuckoo cross with some magpie characteristics he is definitely using metaphors 18 4 There is no physical link between a language and a bird The reason the metaphors phoenix and cuckoo are used is that on the one hand hybridic Israeli is based on Hebrew which like a phoenix rises from the ashes and on the other hand hybridic Israeli is based on Yiddish which like a cuckoo lays its egg in the nest of another bird tricking it to believe that it is its own egg Furthermore the metaphor magpie is employed because according to Zuckermann hybridic Israeli displays the characteristics of a magpie stealing from languages such as Arabic and English 18 4 6 Two examples using the term fishing help clarify the distinction 19 The phrase to fish pearls uses metonymy drawing from fishing the idea of taking things from the ocean What is carried across from fishing fish to fishing pearls is the domain of metonymy In contrast the metaphorical phrase fishing for information transfers the concept of fishing into a new domain If someone is fishing for information we do not imagine that the person is anywhere near the ocean rather we transpose elements of the action of fishing waiting hoping to catch something that cannot be seen probing into a new domain a conversation Thus metaphor works by presenting a target set of meanings and using them to suggest a similarity between items actions or events in two domains whereas metonymy calls up or references a specific domain here removing items from the sea Sometimes metaphor and metonymy may both be at work in the same figure of speech or one could interpret a phrase metaphorically or metonymically For example the phrase lend me your ear could be analyzed in a number of ways One could imagine the following interpretations Analyze ear metonymically first ear means attention because people use ears to pay attention to each other s speech Now when we hear the phrase Talk to him you have his ear it symbolizes he will listen to you or that he will pay attention to you Another phrase lending an ear attention we stretch the base meaning of lend to let someone borrow an object to include the lending of non material things attention but beyond this slight extension of the verb no metaphor is at work Imagine the whole phrase literally imagine that the speaker literally borrows the listener s ear as a physical object and the person s head with it Then the speaker has temporary possession of the listener s ear so the listener has granted the speaker temporary control over what the listener hears The phrase lend me your ear is interpreted to metaphorically mean that the speaker wants the listener to grant the speaker temporary control over what the listener hears First analyze the verb phrase lend me your ear metaphorically to mean turn your ear in my direction since it is known that literally lending a body part is nonsensical Then analyze the motion of ears metonymically we associate turning ears with paying attention which is what the speaker wants the listeners to do It is difficult to say which analysis above most closely represents the way a listener interprets the expression and it is possible that different listeners analyse the phrase in different ways or even in different ways at different times Regardless all three analyses yield the same interpretation Thus metaphor and metonymy though different in their mechanism work together seamlessly 20 Examples Edit Main article List of metonyms Here are some broad kinds of relationships where metonymy is frequently used Containment When one thing contains another it can frequently be used metonymically as when dish is used to refer not to a plate but to the food it contains or as when the name of a building is used to refer to the entity it contains as when the White House or the Pentagon are used to refer to the Administration of the United States or the U S Department of Defense respectively A physical item place or body part used to refer to a related concept such as the bench for the judicial profession stomach or belly for appetite or hunger mouth for speech being in diapers for infancy palate for taste the altar or the aisle for marriage hand for someone s responsibility for something he had a hand in it head or brain for mind or intelligence or nose for concern about someone else s affairs as in keep your nose out of my business A reference to Timbuktu as in from here to Timbuktu usually means a place or idea is too far away or mysterious Metonymy of objects or body parts for concepts is common in dreams 21 Tools instruments Often a tool is used to signify the job it does or the person who does the job as in the phrase his Rolodex is long and valuable referring to the Rolodex instrument which keeps contact business cards meaning he has a lot of contacts and knows many people Also the press referring to the printing press or as in the proverb The pen is mightier than the sword Product for process This is a type of metonymy where the product of the activity stands for the activity itself For example in The book is moving right along the book refers to the process of writing or publishing 22 Punctuation marks often stand metonymically for a meaning expressed by the punctuation mark For example He s a big question mark to me indicates that something is unknown 23 In the same way period can be used to emphasise that a point is concluded or not to be challenged Synecdoche A part of something is often used for the whole as when people refer to head of cattle or assistants are referred to as hands An example of this is the Canadian dollar referred to as the loonie for the image of a bird on the one dollar coin United States one hundred dollar bills are often referred to as Bens Benjamins or Franklins because they bear a portrait of Benjamin Franklin Also the whole of something is used for a part as when people refer to a municipal employee as the city or police officers as the law Fleet Street where most British national newspapers previously operated is used as a metonym for the British press Toponyms A country s capital city or some location within the city is frequently used as a metonym for the country s government such as Washington D C in the United States Ottawa in Canada Rome in Italy Paris in France Tokyo in Japan New Delhi in India London in the United Kingdom Moscow in Russia etc Similarly other important places such as Wall Street Madison Avenue Silicon Valley Hollywood Vegas and Detroit are commonly used to refer to the industries that are located there finance advertising high technology entertainment gambling and motor vehicles respectively Such usage may persist even when the industries in question have moved elsewhere for example Fleet Street continues to be used as a metonymy for the British national press though many national publications are no longer headquartered on the street of that name 24 Places and institutions Edit A place is often used as a metonym for a government or other official institutions for example Brussels for the institutions of the European Union The Hague for the International Court of Justice or International Criminal Court Nairobi for the government of Kenya the Kremlin for the Russian presidency Number 10 or Whitehall for the prime minister of the United Kingdom the White House and Capitol Hill for the executive and legislative branches respectively of the United States federal government or Foggy Bottom for the U S State Department Other names of addresses or locations can become convenient shorthand names in international diplomacy allowing commentators and insiders to refer impersonally and succinctly to foreign ministries with impressive and imposing names as for example the Quai d Orsay the Wilhelmstrasse the Kremlin and the Porte A place or places can represent an entire industry for instance Wall Street used metonymically can stand for the entire U S financial and corporate banking sector 25 and Hollywood for the U S film industry and the people associated with it The High Street of which there are over 5 000 in Britain is a term commonly used to refer to the entire British retail sector 26 Common nouns and phrases can also be metonyms red tape can stand for bureaucracy whether or not that bureaucracy uses actual red tape to bind documents In Commonwealth realms The Crown is a metonym for the state in all its aspects 27 In recent Israeli usage the term Balfour came to refer to the Israeli Prime Minister s residence located on Balfour Street in Jerusalem to all the streets around it where demonstrations frequently take place and also to the Prime Minister and his family who live in the residence 28 Rhetoric in ancient history EditThis section relies largely or entirely on a single source Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page Please help improve this article by introducing citations to additional sources Find sources Metonymy news newspapers books scholar JSTOR December 2013 Western culture studied poetic language and deemed it to be rhetoric A Al Sharafi supports this concept in his book Textual Metonymy Greek rhetorical scholarship at one time became entirely poetic scholarship 29 Philosophers and rhetoricians thought that metaphors were the primary figurative language used in rhetoric Metaphors served as a better means to attract the audience s attention because the audience had to read between the lines in order to get an understanding of what the speaker was trying to say Others did not think of metonymy as a good rhetorical method because metonymy did not involve symbolism Al Sharafi explains This is why they undermined practical and purely referential discourse because it was seen as banal and not containing anything new strange or shocking 29 Greek scholars contributed to the definition of metonymy For example Isocrates worked to define the difference between poetic language and non poetic language by saying that Prose writers are handicapped in this regard because their discourse has to conform to the forms and terms used by the citizens and to those arguments which are precise and relevant to the subject matter In other words Isocrates proposes here that metaphor is a distinctive feature of poetic language because it conveys the experience of the world afresh and provides a kind of defamiliarisation in the way the citizens perceive the world 29 Democritus described metonymy by saying Metonymy that is the fact that words and meaning change 29 Aristotle discussed different definitions of metaphor regarding one type as what we know to be metonymy today Latin scholars also had an influence on metonymy The treatise Rhetorica ad Herennium states metonymy as the figure which draws from an object closely akin or associated an expression suggesting the object meant but not called by its own name 29 The author describes the process of metonymy to us saying that we first figure out what a word means We then figure out that word s relationship with other words We understand and then call the word by a name that it is associated with Perceived as such then metonymy will be a figure of speech in which there is a process of abstracting a relation of proximity between two words to the extent that one will be used in place of another 29 Cicero viewed metonymy as more of a stylish rhetorical method and described it as being based on words but motivated by style citation needed Jakobson structuralism and realism EditMetonymy became important in French structuralism through the work of Roman Jakobson In his 1956 essay The Metaphoric and Metonymic Poles Jakobson relates metonymy to the linguistic practice of syntagmatic combination and to the literary practice of realism He explains The primacy of the metaphoric process in the literary schools of Romanticism and symbolism has been repeatedly acknowledged but it is still insufficiently realized that it is the predominance of metonymy which underlies and actually predetermines the so called realistic trend which belongs to an intermediary stage between the decline of Romanticism and the rise of symbolism and is opposed to both Following the path of contiguous relationships the realistic author metonymically digresses from the plot to the atmosphere and from the characters to the setting in space and time He is fond of synecdochic details In the scene of Anna Karenina s suicide Tolstoy s artistic attention is focused on the heroine s handbag and in War and Peace the synecdoches hair on the upper lip or bare shoulders are used by the same writer to stand for the female characters to whom these features belong 30 Jakobson s theories were important for Claude Levi Strauss Roland Barthes Jacques Lacan and others 31 Dreams can use metonyms 32 Metonyms and art EditMetonyms can also be wordless For example Roman Jakobson 33 argued that cubist art relied heavily on nonlinguistic metonyms while surrealist art relied more on metaphors Lakoff and Turner 34 argued that all words are metonyms Words stand for the concepts they express Some artists have used actual words as metonyms in their paintings For example Miro s 1925 painting Photo This is the Color of My Dreams has the word photo to represent the image of his dreams This painting comes from a series of paintings called peintures poesies paintings poems which reflect Miro s interest in dreams and the subconscious 35 and the relationship of words images and thoughts Picasso in his 1911 painting Pipe Rack and Still Life on Table inserts the word Ocean rather than painting an ocean These paintings by Miro and Picasso are in a sense the reverse of a rebus the word stands for the picture instead of the picture standing for the word See also Edit Look up metonymy in Wiktionary the free dictionary onym Antonomasia Deferred reference Eggcorn Eponym Enthymeme Euphemism by comparison Generic trademark Kenning List of metonyms Meronymy Newspeak Pars pro toto Simile Slang Sobriquet Social stereotype Totum pro parteReferences EditCitations Edit metonymy Cambridge University Press Retrieved 2017 06 17 metonym The Chambers Dictionary 9th ed Chambers 2003 ISBN 0 550 10105 5 Definition of metonymy Dictionary com www dictionary com Retrieved 2022 05 01 Metonymy Definition amp Meaning Merriam Webster Merriam Webster Dictionary Retrieved 2022 06 13 Welsh Alfred Hux James Mickleborough Greenwood 1893 Studies in English Grammar A Comprehensive Course for Grammar Schools High Schools and Academies New York City Silver Burdett p 222 Dirven Rene Porings Ralf 2002 Metaphor and Metonymy in Comparison and Contrast Walter de Gruyter ISBN 978 3 11 017373 4 Wilber Ken 2000 Sex Ecology Spirituality Shambhala Publications ISBN 978 0 8348 2108 8 Tompkins Penny James Lawley Metonymy and Part Whole Relationships www cleanlanguage co uk Retrieved 19 December 2012 Burke Kenneth 1945 A Grammar of Motives New York Prentice Hall Inc pp 503 09 Dubois Jacques Mu Groupe Edeline Francis Klinkenberg Jean Marie 1981 A General Rhetoric Johns Hopkins University Press ISBN 978 0 8018 2326 8 Shaheen Aaron 2020 06 25 Great War Prostheses in American Literature and Culture Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 885778 5 Metonymy Examples and Definition of Metonymy Literary Devices 2020 08 12 Retrieved 2021 03 22 a b Bloom Harold 2003 A Map of Misreading Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 516221 9 metalepsis Silva Rhetoricae Archived from the original on 2013 08 16 Retrieved 2013 12 05 Panther Klaus Uwe Radden Gunter 1999 01 01 Metonymy in Language and Thought John Benjamins Publishing ISBN 978 90 272 2356 2 Conference Rhetoric Society of America Smith Michelle Christine Warnick Barbara 2010 The Responsibilities of Rhetoric Waveland Press ISBN 978 1 57766 623 3 Chandler Daniel Rhetorical Tropes Semiotics for Beginners Aberystwyth University Retrieved 19 December 2012 a b Zuckermann Ghil ad 2020 Revivalistics From the Genesis of Israeli to Language Reclamation in Australia and Beyond New York Oxford University Press ISBN 9780199812790 Example drawn from Dirven 1996 Geeraerts Dirk 2002 The interaction of metaphor and metonymy in composite expressions PDF In R Dirven and R Porings ed Metaphor and Metonymy in Comparison and Contrast Walter de Gruyter pp 435 465 ISBN 978 3 11 017373 4 Retrieved 30 November 2013 Blechner M J 2018 The Mindbrain and Dreams New York Routledge Lakoff and Johnson 1999 p 203 Lakoff and Johnson 1999 p 245 Weinreb Ben Hibbert Christopher Keay Julia Keay John 2008 The London Encyclopaedia Pan MacMillan p 300 ISBN 978 1 4050 4924 5 Gibbs Raymond W Jr 1999 Speaking and Thinking with Metonymy inPattern and Process A Whiteheadian Perspective on Linguistics ed Klaus Uwe Panther and Gunter Radden Amsterdam John Benjamins Publishing pp 61 76 ISBN 978 9027223562 What next for the high street Deloitte UK Retrieved 25 June 2022 Jackson Michael D 2013 The Crown and Canadian Federalism Toronto Dundurn Press p 20 ISBN 9781459709898 Thousands protest at Balfour call on police not to repeat terror a news item in The Jerusalem Post August 30 2020 a b c d e f Al Sharafi Abdul Gabbar 2004 Textual Metonymy A Semiotic Approach ISBN 9781403938909 Jakobson Roman 1956 The Metaphoric and Metonymic Poles In Dirven Rene Porings Ralf eds Metaphor and Metonymy in Comparison and Contrast revised ed de Gruyter pp 41 48 ISBN 9783110173741 Retrieved 14 May 2016 Dirven Rene 2003 Metonymy and Metaphor Different Mental Strategies of Conceptualisation In Dirven Rene Porings Ralf eds Metaphor and Metonymy in Comparison and Contrast revised ed de Gruyter pp 75 112 ISBN 9783110173741 Retrieved 14 May 2016 Blechner M J 2018 The Mindbrain and Dreams An Exploration of Thinking Dreaming and Artistic Creation New York Routledge Jakobson R 1971 Selected Writings Word and Language Vol 2 The Hague Mouton Lakoff G and Turner M 1989 More than Cool Reason A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor Chicago IL University of Chicago Press Rowell M 1976 Joan Miro Peinture Poesie Paris Editions de la difference Sources Edit Blank Andreas 1997 Prinzipien des lexikalischen Bedeutungswandels am Beispiel der romanischen Sprachen Walter de Gruyter ISBN 978 3 11 093160 0 Corbett Edward P J 1998 1971 Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student 4th ed New York Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 511542 0 Dirven Rene 1999 Conversion as a Conceptual Metonymy of Event Schemata In K U Panther G Radden eds Metonymy in Language and Thought John Benjamins Publishing pp 275 288 ISBN 978 90 272 2356 2 Fass Dan 1997 Processing Metonymy and Metaphor Ablex ISBN 978 1 56750 231 2 Grzega Joachim 2004 Bezeichnungswandel Wie Warum Wozu Ein Beitrag zur englischen und allgemeinen Onomasiologie Heidelberg Universitatsverlag Winter de ISBN 978 3 8253 5016 1 Lakoff George Johnson Mark 1999 Philosophy in the Flesh The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought Basic Books ISBN 978 0 465 05674 3 Somov Georgij Yu 2009 Metonymy and its manifestation in visual artworks Case study of late paintings by Bruegel the Elder Semiotica 2009 174 309 66 doi 10 1515 semi 2009 037 S2CID 170990814 Smyth Herbert Weir 1920 Greek Grammar Cambridge MA Harvard University Press p 680 ISBN 978 0 674 36250 5 Warren Beatrice 2006 Referential Metonymy Publications of the Royal Society of Letters at Lund Lund Sweden Almqvist amp Wiksell International ISBN 978 91 22 02148 3 Further reading EditFass Dan 1988 Metonymy and metaphor what s the difference Proceedings of the 12th conference on Computational linguistics Vol 1 pp 177 81 doi 10 3115 991635 991671 ISBN 978 963 8431 56 1 S2CID 9557558 Gaines Charles 2003 Reconsidering Metaphor Metonymy Art and the Suppression of Thought No 64 Jakobson Roman 1995 1956 Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Disturbances In Linda Waugh and Monique Monville Burston ed On Language Cambridge Massachusetts Harvard University Press ISBN 978 0 674 63536 4 Lakoff George 1980 Metaphors We Live By Chicago IL The University of Chicago Press ISBN 978 0 226 46801 3 Low Graham 1999 02 11 An Essay Is a Person In Cameron Lynne Low Graham eds Researching and Applying Metaphor Cambridge Cambridge University Press pp 221 48 ISBN 978 0 521 64964 3 Perez Sobrino Paula 2014 Meaning construction in verbomusical environments Conceptual disintegration and metonymy PDF Journal of Pragmatics 70 130 151 doi 10 1016 j pragma 2014 06 008 Peters Wim 2003 Metonymy as a cross lingual phenomenon Proceedings of the ACL 2003 Workshop on Lexicon and Figurative Language 14 1 9 doi 10 3115 1118975 1118976 S2CID 8267864 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Metonymy amp oldid 1143239984, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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