Metonymy and Metaphor

Hawraa Jabbar Rahi

Section One
Introduction

1. 1 Introductory Remarks
The present paper is divided into four sections; the first presents
the introduction; the second is devoted to metonymy, the third is
dedicated to metaphor, and the fourth is concerned with the relationship
between the two phenomena, their similarities, and their differences.

Metonymy and metaphor are two semantic phenomena that evoke

the "figurative" or "non-literal" meaning. The study of this kind of
meaning has not traditionally been the focus of linguistic semantics
because non-literal meaning has sometimes been regarded as largely
idiosyncratic and therefore as less principled and rule governed than
literal meaning. But the study of non-literal meaning, especially
metonymy and metaphor, has become much more important in recent
years because semanticists have begun to realise how prevalent they are
in everyday language. They have also begun to discover that much, if not
all, of their uses are not totally idiosyncratic, but subject to certain rules
and principles that can be discovered and described.

1
1. 2 Literal and Non-literal Meaning

The basic distinction between literal and non-literal meaning

implies distinguishing between instances where the speaker speaks in a
neutral, factually accurate way and instances where the speaker
deliberately describes something in untrue or impossible terms in order to
achieve special effects. Thus, if one afternoon you are feeling the effects
of missing lunch, you might speak literally as in:
(1) I'm hungry.

Or non-literally as in:

(2) I'm starving.

(3) I could eat a horse.
(4) My stomach thinks my throat's cut.

Literal language, i.e. denotation meaning, refers to words that do

not deviate from their defined meaning so that words reveal the meaning
they carry. Palmer (1976: 30) uses the term "reference" in talking about
the denotation of words. Reference deals with the relationship between
the linguistic elements, words, sentences, and the non- linguistic world of
experience. Similarly, Crystal (2003: 129) asserts that denotation
meaning involves the relationship between a linguistic unit (lexical item)
and the non- linguistic entities to which it refers. To sum up, denotation
refers to the literal meaning of a word or "the dictionary definition".

Non-literal uses of language are traditionally called "figurative".

Figurative language, i.e. connotation meaning, refers to words or groups
of words that exaggerate or alter the usual meanings of words. It may
involve analogy to similar concepts or other concepts, and may
exaggerate.

2
 These alterations result in a figure of speech. Besides, the term
connotation refers to emotive or evaluative meaning (Palmer, 1976: 63).
According to Crystal (1992: 80), connotation is the personal or emotional
associations which are suggested by words, and which thus form part of
their meaning for individual speakers.

Figurative language is described by a host of rhetorical terms

including metaphor, irony, metonymy, synecdoche, hyperbole, and litotes
(Saeed, 2016: 14).

Parker and Riley (2005: 23) use non literal language to refer to
connotations or those expressions for which a literal interpretation is
either impossible or absurd within the context of the utterance. For
example, the famished husband who walks through the door and says to
his wife:

(5) I could eat a horse (instead of, I am very hungry)

In example (5) above, the husband is using a non literal language.

In this sense, figurative language does not always mean what is being
said or read, but it serves to make the expressions more interesting as it
helps painting a picture in the mind of the hearer or reader.

Figurative language departs from literal meaning to achieve a

special meaning or effect. Techniques for doing so will be the main
concern for the following sections. Techniques of figurative language
include idiom, simile, irony, metonymy, metaphor, euphemism, etc.
However, the present paper is restricted to metonymy and metaphor
which are two fundamental models of communicating meaning as stated
by Lakoff and Johnson (1980: 43).

3
 Section Two
Metonymy

2. 1 Metonymy: Etymology

Etymologically, the word "metonymy" is derived from the

Greek "metōnymia"  where "meta-" means "among", "with", "between",
or "after" and "-ōnyma", means "name" so that the whole word
"metōnymia" means "change of name", "to call by a new name", or
"to take a new name" (Merriam-Webster's Dictionary, 2019).

2. 2 Metonymy: Definitions
Metonymy is a kind of non-literal language in which one entity is
used to refer to another entity that is associated with it in some way. In
other words, metonymic concepts "allow us to conceptualize one thing by
means of its relation to something else" (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980: 338).

Newmark (1988: 2) points out that metonymy occurs "where the

name of an object is transferred to take the place of something else with
which it is associated".

Gibbs (1994: 62) pays special attention to the linguistic effect of

metonymy and says that "our ability to draw metonymic inferences,
where we infer whole from parts or parts from wholes, is one of the
special characteristics of the poetics of mind".

Radden and Kövecses (1999: 21) believe that metonymy is "a

cognitive process in which one conceptual entity, the vehicle, provides
mental access to another conceptual entity, the target, within the same
idealized cognitive model".

4
 Crystal (2003: 291) metonym is a term used in semantics, referring
to a figure of speech in which the name of an attribute of entity is used in
place of the entity itself.

Yule (2006: 108) considers metonymy as a type of relationship

between words based simply on a close connection in everyday
experience. This connection can be based on:

 Container-contents relation: bottle / water, can / juice.

 Whole-part relation: car / wheels, house / roof.
 Representative-symbol relationship: king / crown, the President /
the White House.

Hurford et al. (2007: 338) emphasise that metonymy is a kind of

non-literal language in which an object is used to refer to another that is
associated with in some way.

Metonymy means using expressions in which we refer to

something using the name of something else that is closely related to it.
For example, as when journalists use the expression "Downing Street" to
refer to the "British Prime Minister" (Macmillan Dictionary, 2007).

 Löbner (2013: 52) opines that metonymy establishes a connection

within a single domain so that an expression is used metonymically if it is
used to refer to things that belong to the kind of objects to which the
expression refers to in its literal meaning. For example, "the university"
stands for the campus, its administration, and the courses in:

(6) The university stars again on April 15.

Metonymy is defined by Matzner (2016: 48) as a trope whose

logical basis is the association or contiguity between two entities within
the same domain. For example, the use of an author's name to refer to
works written by that author as in:

5
 (7)He is studying Hemingway.
 

Metonymy is the substitution of the name of one thing for that of

another to which the former bears a known and close relation. Metonymy
often appears in news articles and headlines as when journalists use the
term "crown" to refer to a king or queen (Merriam-Webster dictionary,
2019).

Metonymy is a referential strategy which is achieved by identifying

something associated with the referent. So place-names like "Moscow"
and "Washington" can be used to refer to governments as in:

(8) Moscow and Washington are still at odds over Iran's role.

2. 3 Types of Metonymic Relations

Metonymy is a productive way in semantics. Various taxonomies
of metonymic relations have been proposed. The most central of which is
presented by Lakoff and Johnson (1980).

Lakoff and Johnson (ibid.: 338) observe that there are in fact
several different kinds of metonymy that are frequently found in everyday
language. A major category of metonyms, according to Lakoff and
Johnson's (ibid.) framework, involves using the part as a whole. This
phenomenon, which has traditionally been called synecdoche, is
exemplified by expressions such as "wheels" to make reference to "cars",
or "fresh blood" as a reference to "new people".
Leech (1969: 148) suggests that synecdoche is identified with a
rule which applies the term for the part to the whole or the whole to the
part. Some metonymic relations are presented below:

6
2. 3. 1 Part for whole (synecdoche)
(9) There are a lot of new faces in the squad.
2. 3. 2 Whole for part (synecdoche)
(10)Germany won the world cup.
2. 3. 3 Container for content
(11)I don't drink more than two bottles.
2. 3. 4 Material for object
(12)She needs a glass.
2. 3. 5 Producer for product
(13)She always wears Stella McCartney.
2. 3. 6 Place for institution
(14)Downing Street has made no comment.
2. 3. 7 Institution for people
(15)The Senate isn't happy with this bill.
2. 3. 8 Place for event
(16) Hiroshima changed our view of war.
2. 3. 9 Controlled for controller
(17) All the hospitals are on strike.
2. 3. 10 Cause for effect
(18) His native tongue is Hausa.
2. 3. 11 Object for User
(19) All the buses are on strike.

Some choices seem more common and natural than others, for
example the use of "tongue" for "language" is more common than the use
of "blood" for "people" in:

(20) We've got some new blood in the organization. (= new people)

7
2. 4 Motivations for the Use of Metonymy

2. 4. 1 Naming

According to Webster's Third New International Dictionary (1976:

1424), the standard rhetorical definition of metonymy is as follows:

Metonymy is a figure of speech that consists in using the name of one

thing for that of something else with which it is associated.

But this definition overlooks a range of cases where we have to

refer to a certain entity which has no name at all at the moment. How do
we solve this lack of a literal name for the referent?
One way is to employ a metonymic expression by using the name
of some other entity to identify the intended referent when there is a
salient relation between them.

In the past few years, the number of recognizable astronomical

objects has increased from a few hundred to a few billion stars, and it is a
thorny problem for scientists to give names to them all. One solution is to
name some stars after the individuals who discovered them in order to
honour the discoverers.
In some cases, even if the intended referent has its own name, the
speaker or hearer may not know it, or it may not be the most efficient way
to pick out the referent in certain situations, and a more indirect
referential expression may be used. For instance, in a hospital context,
example (21) below would often be the most efficient way of identifying
the patients even though they have their own names:

(21) Where's the "Brain" now that we need him?

In hospital settings, doctors and nurses may well know nothing about
their individual patients except their illness or the bed where they lie.
8
2. 4. 2 Shorthand

The view that metonymy is a kind of shorthand can be traced back

to Jakobson (1956: 115) who proposed that metaphor and metonymy
were based on two opposite principles: similarity and contiguity. To show
the property of shorthand in metonymy, the following examples are
presented where (22) might be analyzed as derivable by deletion from
(23):
(22) The sails crossed the sea.
(23) The ships with sails crossed the sea.

Consider another example where someone wants to buy three

bottles of fat free milk:

a. Three bottles of fat free milk, please.

b. Three milk, please.
c. Three fat free, please.
d. Three bottles, please.
e. Three, please.

Metonymy is a kind of referential shorthand in which the

metonymic expression is a rather obviously shortened version of the
longer literal description (Saeed, 1997: 180). For instance "Vietnam war"
may be shortened to "Vietnam" and "the terrorist act of
11th of September" may be shortened to "9.11".

2. 4. 3 Innovative Uses of Words

New and innovative ways of saying things are brought about by

speakers seeking to enhance expressivity. Consider the following
example:

(24) We need some good heads.

9
 The word "heads" is used to refer to "people" basing on the part-
whole relation between heads and people. The use of "heads" to refer to
"people" in this particular example is not random, rather it implies that
what is needed is an "intelligent" person, not just any ordinary one. When
"good heads" is used to refer to intelligent people, the point is to pick out
a particular characteristic of the person, namely, intelligence, which is
associated with the head. Thus, metonymy allows the speaker to highlight
certain aspects of what is being referred to. This metonymy makes it easy
for the hearer to identify the intended referent.

Section Three
Metaphor

3. 1 Metaphor: Etymology

Etymologically, the word "metaphor" is derived from the

Greek "métaphora"  where "meta-" means "among", "with", "between",
or "after" and "-phora", means "to bear" or "to carry" so that the whole
word "métaphora " means "carrying over the meaning of one word to
another word" (Merriam-Webster's Dictionary, 2019).

3. 2 Metaphor: Definitions
Metaphor is a figurative use of language based on an implicit
identification of resemblance. It is seen as a mapping between two
domains of knowledge, one being a source domain and the other a target
domain as the following example clarifies:

(25) He and his wife have called a truce.

The target domain would be a marital dispute and the source
domain would be war.
10
 Leech (1969: 156) states that a metaphor is a covert comparison,
for example:

(26)The ship ploughs the waves.

This metaphor may be transferred into simile as "the ship goes through
the waves like a plough ploughing the land".

Palmer (1976: 66) points out that metaphor is one of the most
familiar kinds of relationship between meanings where a word appears
to have both a "literal" meaning and one or more "transferred"
meanings, for example "the leg of a chair or table", "the eye of a
needle or a potato".

Lakoff and Johnson (1980: 62) affirm that metaphor is deeply

ingrained in our thoughts, actions, and everyday language. They
(ibid.) argue that metaphors constitute the foundation of our
conceptual system and influence our thoughts, actions, and
communication.

Crystal (1992: 249) denotes that a metaphor is a semantic

mapping from conceptual domain to another by using deviant
language, for example "to lose the thread of an argument".

Aitchison (1992: 9-10) asserts that metaphor is the use of a word

or phrase in place of another in order to suggest a likeness between
them.

Metaphor is a figure of speech in which a term that is usually

associated with a certain entity is used to describe another as in "the dawn
of history" (Elhindi, 2009: 131).

11
 Löbner (2013: 53) states that an expression is used metaphorically
if it is used to refer to things that are in crucial aspects similar to the kind
of objects to which the expression refers in its literal meaning.

3. 3 Types of Metaphorical Relations

In emphasising the important role of metaphor in ordinary
language, Lakoff and Johnson (1980: 14-21) identified a large number of
common metaphors. They describe metaphor in terms of Up–Down
orientation. In Western culture "up" is associated with positive concepts
like "happiness" and "health", whereas "down" is related to negative ones
such as "sadness" and "illness". This gives rise to such metaphoric
expressions as "high spirits", "feeling up", and "falling ill" as the
following examples illustrate:

3. 3. 1. Happy is up; Sad is down

(26) I'm feeling up.
(27) My spirits sank.

3. 3. 2. Conscious is up; Unconscious is Down

(28) Wake up.
(29) He fell asleep.

3. 3. 3. Health and Life are Up; Sickness and Death are Down
(30) He's at the peak of health.
(31) He fell ill.

4. Having Control or Force is Up; Being Subject to Control or Force

is Down
(32) I have control over her.
(33) He is under my control.

5. Good is Up; Bad is Down

(34) Things are looking up.
12
 (35) Things are at an all-time low.

6. Virtue is Up; Depravity is Down

(36) She has high standards.
(37) That was a low-down thing to do.

As Lakoff and Johnson (1980: 22) point out, these metaphors seem
to be based on our bodily experiences of lying down and getting up and
their associations with consciousness, health, and power in terms of
verticality in human experience.

Metaphor can be structural, oriental, ontological, container, and

imaginative and creative. Structural metaphor, a concept is
metaphorically structured in terms of another as in "your argument is
indefensible" which structures the concept of verbal exchanges in terms
of war. In oriental metaphor, a whole system of concepts is organized
with respect to one another. They are related to spatial orientation such as
up-down as in "I feel up today" and "my spirits sank". In ontological
metaphor, our experience with physical objects provides the basis of our
understanding and employment. This type of metaphor reflects the way of
viewing events, activities, emotions, ideas as entities and substances as in
"the middle class is a powerful silent force in American politics". In
container metaphor, each of us is taken to be a container, i.e., concrete
objects as when we say "I put a lot of energy into washing the window".
By imaginative and creative metaphor, a new meaning is granted to our
experience by highlighting certain features as in "love is a collaborative
work of art".

13
3. 4 Motivations for the Use of Metaphor

There are two views on the motivations for the use of metaphor
and its role in language. The first is often called the classical view since it
can be traced back to Aristotle's writings on metaphor. According to this
view, metaphor was seen as a kind of decorative addition to ordinary
plain language and as a rhetorical device to be used at certain times to
gain certain effects. This view portrays metaphor as something outside
normal language which requires special forms of interpretation from
listeners or readers (Nerlich and Clarke, 2007: 595).

The second view to metaphor is often called the Romantic view

since it is associated with eighteenth and nineteenth century Romantic
view of the imagination. In this view, metaphor is integral to language
and thought as a way of experiencing the world. In this view, metaphor is
evidence of the role of the imagination in conceptualising and reasoning,
and it follows that all languages are metaphorical (ibid.: 596).

There are numerous everyday expressions that are metaphoric in

nature. These expressions include such conceptual metaphors like
"argument as war" speaking about "argument" as if it was "war" when we
use such expressions as "attacking or defending a position", "winning or
losing an argument", or talking about claims as being "indefensible".

Sweetser (1990: 32) identifies "Mind-as-Body" metaphor as when

in English we speak of "grasping" an idea or "holding" a thought. Thus,
in English the verb "see" has two meanings: the basic physical one of
"seeing by the eyes" and the metaphorically extended one of
"understanding or perceiving" as in:

(38) I see what you mean.

14
 Verbs of sense perception have shown a consistent and widespread
tendency to shift from the physical to the mental domain so that words of
seeing mean understanding, words of hearing mean obeying, and words
of tasting mean choosing, deciding, or expressing personal preferences.

Even a universal concept like "time" is metaphorically anchored.

Some metaphoric expressions indicate the passage of "time" as in
"approaching", "arriving", "running", and "flying".

This metaphorisation of time, they believe, is culturally specific as

reflected in different languages. In English, for instance, we "look
forward" to future events and regard past ones as being "behind us"
whereas in Aymara, the future is "behind". In this culture, the
metaphorisation of future events as being behind indicates the
unforeseeable nature of such events.

However, some metaphors can be universal. English metaphoric

expressions like "boiling blood" and "simmering down", for example,
have parallels in languages as diverse as Chinese, Japanese, Hungarian,
and Polish (Kovecses, 2005: 39).

3. 5 Conceptual Metaphor Theory

Lakoff and Johnson (1980) proposed an approach termed
"Conceptual Metaphor Theory". According to this theory, metaphor is
considered as a conceptual or mental operation which is reflected in
human language and it enables speakers to structure and construe abstract
areas of knowledge and experience in more concrete experiential terms.
Speakers make use of a familiar area of knowledge, called the source
domain, to understand an area of knowledge that is less familiar, the
target domain. The source domain is typically understood through our

15
experience and the physical world around us. Consider the following
examples from Lakoff and Johnson (1980: 54):

(26) My car is a lemon.

(27) Dr Jones is a butcher.

This is done by linguistically linking the more abstract target

domains of knowledge about cars and doctors to more particularized
familiar concrete source domains (i.e. knowledge about lemons in the
"fruit" domain and butchers in the domain of possible professions,
respectively) in order to specify that there is something "negative" about
each. We know from experience, for example, that lemons are sour and
butchers can be rough and sometimes messy in their work.
Section Four
Metonymy and Metaphor
4. 1 Metonymy and Metaphor: Continuous Controversy

Many scholars profoundly questioned the relationship between the

two concepts, metonymy and metaphor, throughout history. Aristotle, did
not recognize the distinctive character of metonymy and reduced it to a
subtype of metaphor (Panther and Radden, 1999: 1).

Lakoff and Johnson (1980: 36) argue that metaphor and metonymy
are different kinds of processes. They (ibid.) argue that metaphor is
principally a way of conceiving of one thing in terms of another, whereas
metonymy allows us to use one entity to stand for another. Lakoff and
Johnson (ibid.: 265) also note that the distinction between metaphor and
metonymy is "real but often confusing".

16
4. 2 Metaphor and Metonymy: Similarities

Metonymy and metaphor start their lives without the strict

differentiation as a result of the fact that they share a central feature. In
both, metonymy and metaphor, properties of one idea are attributed to
another. Metaphor and metonymy appear prominently in most
discussions of meaning relations as mechanisms of semantic extension
from a "basic" or "core" meaning to an "extended" one (Riemer, 2005:
186). In cognitive linguistics, metonymy is seen, like metaphor, as a
mapping , but within a single domain f knowledge (Saeed, 2016: 336).

4. 3 Metaphor and Metonymy: Boundary Issues

The terms "metaphor" and "metonymy" first appear in classical

rhetoric. Aristotle defines metaphor as "the application of the name of
something to something else". Similarly, metonymy is simply defined as
the substitution of one "name" for another (Riemer, 2005: 186).

When the history of rhetoric and semantics has enshrined the

division of meaning extensions, the precise lines on which the division
should be made between "metaphor" and "metonymy" still remain far
from agreed.

According to Lyons (1977: 548), metaphor and metonymy are two

terms under which most of the compound lexemes can be accounted for.
An example of a compound that is obviously based on metaphor is "wet
blanket" in the sense in which it denotes someone who inhibits others in
their enjoyment and another example is "live wire" to refer to energetic
person:
(28) He is a very wet blanket.
(29) He is a very live wire

17
 An example of compound lexemes based on metonymy is "red
cap" which in American English denotes a porter and in British English a
military policeman.

4. 4 Concluding Remarks

Metonymy and metaphor are two essential aspects of meaning

construction which are central within the semantic field of
communication. They are two fundamental poles along which a discourse
with human language is developed. It has been argued that the two poles
of similarity and contiguity are fundamental ones along which the human
brain is structured. Consequently, they have a strong linguistic impact as
they can be considered as crucial mechanisms of lexical creation.
Additionally, they can fulfil functions related to the generation of
emotional contextual effects. Without metonymy and metaphor,
therefore, the discussion of science, morality, or philosophy would not be
possible.

Metaphor and metonymy are both ways of connecting two

concepts or making one concept stands for another. The fundamental
distinction between metaphor and metonymy is that metaphor connects
two concepts based on similarity and metonymy based on part/whole
relationship or other relationships including container/content,
material/object, etc. Unlike metaphor which involves two domains of
experience, metonymy only requires one. Unlike metaphor which is
based on similarity, metonymy requires contiguity, i.e. closeness of
association. 

18