Metonymy

Explanation

Metonymy names something through an expression belonging to the same factual or experiential configuration. “Washington responded” allows a place to stand for political institutions located there; “drink a glass” shifts from container to contents. Unlike metaphor, metonymy does not primarily cross into another domain through perceived similarity. It follows relations of contiguity such as place and institution, cause and effect, producer and work, or part and whole. Which connection is intelligible depends on cultural knowledge and context. Metonymy condenses by selecting one point of access while co-activating a larger configuration. It can reveal responsibility, but it can also obscure it when institutions, persons, places, and actions are compressed into one label.

Movement of thought

1. A complex configuration contains elements that regularly occur together. 2. One element is linguistically selected as a point of access to another. 3. Hearers follow a familiar relation of contiguity toward the intended target. 4. A counter-test asks which agents or responsibilities the compression reveals or conceals. 5. The named element returns as the carrier of a larger unspoken configuration.

Scientific use case

Corpus studies can annotate recurrent source-target relations and examine which actors news headlines make visible through metonymy. Experiments can test whether alternative access points change attribution of responsibility and evaluation.

Example

“The White House announced …” presents neither a speaking building nor merely a geographical place. An institution and its authorised actors become accessible through their location.

Counterexample

“The foot of the mountain” is normally understood metaphorically through similarity of form or position. If no established contiguity exists and a resemblance across domains must be constructed, a primarily metonymic analysis is less plausible.

Distinction

Distinguish metonymy from metaphor and synecdoche. Metaphor structures one domain through another by projected similarity; synecdoche is often defined more narrowly through part-whole or species-genus relations.

Effect on thought and perception

Metonymy condenses a configuration into one selected point of access and directs attention toward particular parts, places, causes, or agents.

Resonance

One element calls up the configuration to which it belongs; what is named lets its unnamed neighbour sound as an active background.

Cite this entry

Reich, Michael (Hrsg./ed.): „Metonymy“. Atlas der Sprache, AT-091-004. ATLAS 260, data model 1.6.0. https://atlasoflanguage.com/concept/AT-091-004

https://atlasoflanguage.com/concept/AT-091-004