Metonomy
Metonymy
Part 1
Comments and counter-suggestions on the following preliminary readings:
Lakoff and Johnson 1980, Metaphors we live by
Panther and Thornburg 2004, The role of conceptual metonymy in meaning construction
Raden and Kovecses , Towards a Theory of metonymy
Otono 2001, High level metonymy and linguistic structure
Gibbs 1994, Figurative thought and figurative language
Metonymy and synecdoche are ill-defined.
Essentially, they are not defined at all. Instead of providing a definition of Metonymy the authors merely assemble an extensive range examples in order to show how
Metonymy is characteristically used.
An obvious problem with the standard approach by L & J (also found in the other papers we looked at) is that their view of metonymy does not account for the difference between metonymies and metaphors (in fact one could say that metaphor in their account is just another manifestation of metonymic relations) => A number of utterances that empirical intuition would pin down as metaphorical must be seen as metonymies, whereas many of the utterances they confidently group as metonymic seem more like metaphors.
Οne can easily see and example of this contradiction in the test L & J use (1980) to peel apart metaphorical personification from metonymy. They produce the following two examples: a. inflation robbed me of my savings
b. the ham sandwich left and then propose: In (a) we are not using ‘inflation’ to refer to a person but impute human qualities to it. In (b) though we do not impute human qualities to the ‘ham sandwich’ but use it to refer to sth else. Hence (a) = personification metaphor and (b) = metonymy.
Take, however, the following 3 utterances:
1. the rose died [said of an actual rose]
2. the rose died [said of a fragile and sensitive person]
3. the rose died [said of a girl holding a rose]
Although L & J ‘s characterization distinguishes between (1) and (3) as distinct phenomena, it does not capture at all the
Part 1
Comments and counter-suggestions on the following preliminary readings:
Lakoff and Johnson 1980, Metaphors we live by
Panther and Thornburg 2004, The role of conceptual metonymy in meaning construction
Raden and Kovecses , Towards a Theory of metonymy
Otono 2001, High level metonymy and linguistic structure
Gibbs 1994, Figurative thought and figurative language
Metonymy and synecdoche are ill-defined.
Essentially, they are not defined at all. Instead of providing a definition of Metonymy the authors merely assemble an extensive range examples in order to show how
Metonymy is characteristically used.
An obvious problem with the standard approach by L & J (also found in the other papers we looked at) is that their view of metonymy does not account for the difference between metonymies and metaphors (in fact one could say that metaphor in their account is just another manifestation of metonymic relations) => A number of utterances that empirical intuition would pin down as metaphorical must be seen as metonymies, whereas many of the utterances they confidently group as metonymic seem more like metaphors.
Οne can easily see and example of this contradiction in the test L & J use (1980) to peel apart metaphorical personification from metonymy. They produce the following two examples: a. inflation robbed me of my savings
b. the ham sandwich left and then propose: In (a) we are not using ‘inflation’ to refer to a person but impute human qualities to it. In (b) though we do not impute human qualities to the ‘ham sandwich’ but use it to refer to sth else. Hence (a) = personification metaphor and (b) = metonymy.
Take, however, the following 3 utterances:
1. the rose died [said of an actual rose]
2. the rose died [said of a fragile and sensitive person]
3. the rose died [said of a girl holding a rose]
Although L & J ‘s characterization distinguishes between (1) and (3) as distinct phenomena, it does not capture at all the