MARK FACCHINI and PETER A.

GROSSMAN

METAPHOR AND METONYMY: AN ANALYSIS OF R.A.V. V. CITY

OF ST. PAUL MINNESOTA

Language and meaning are inextricably intertwined. Law is firmly based in

language. “Tricks” that are available in linguistic constructions are avail-
able in the law. Two common literary devices that can be used to obscure
and/or transmute meaning are metaphor and metonymy. These two devices
are essentially linguistic tricks. In the hands of a skillful wordsmith these
tricks can be used to create reversals of meaning, create, modify or min-
imize nuances, and produce emphasis where desired. In this research note,
we will analyze some specific examples of these and other types of semi-
otic transformations in United States Constitutional Law as exemplified in
R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, Minnesota.1
In this note, we will use a combination of four varying definitions of
metaphor. The first definition of metaphor is that which expresses the unfa-
miliar in terms of the familiar.2 Here, metaphor acts as a tool of expression
and explanation to replace what we know with what we do not know.
The second definition of metaphor: “to refer to something by the name
of something else . . . a new metaphor requires an imaginative leap.”3 Here,
metaphor appears to be a substitution of words or ideas that may not always
be intuitive, hence the use of the imaginative leap to understand a new
metaphor. The third definition of metaphor is “one word for another.”4
This definition, although vague, leaves the greatest room for interpreta-
tion. One word represents another, one concept represents another. This
definition, while simple, shows one danger in the use of metaphor: how
one term standing for another term can equally repress or express the ideas
intended by the original term. The fourth definition of metaphor is the
most mechanical. Simply put, a metaphor is where two acoustic images

1 The United States Supreme Court Case of R.A.V. v. St. Paul, 112 S. Ct. 2538, 120 1.
Ed. 2d 305 (1992).
2 K. Silverman, The Subject of Semiotics, (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press,
1983), 110.
3 D. Chandler, Semiotics for Beginners, (MCS web site publication @ http://
www.Aber.ac.uk/∼dgc/semiotic.html, 1998), Sec. 8, 1.
4 J. Lacan, Ecrits: A Selection, Trans. Alan Sheridan. (New York: Norton, 1977).

International Journal for the Semiotics of Law 12: 215–221, 1999.

© 1999 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
216 MARK FACCHINI AND PETER A. GROSSMAN

and two concepts merge, and two acoustic images and only one concept
emerge.5 The image is the actual acoustic image of the word or idea. The
concept is all the subjective and objective qualities of that word or idea.
Here, one of the two concepts is ejected; that concept is forever lost in
the turns of metaphor. This definition allows us to see the greatest abil-
ity of metaphor to change meaning. In our analysis we have favored the
fourth definition but we will use the method of triangulation using each
of the other three definitions to help us to most completely understand the
linguistic transitions.
In this note we will also use a triangulation of three definitions of met-
onymy. The first definition of metonymy broadly involves an individual
example standing for the related general category-or more specifically an
associated detail standing for an object.6 As with metaphors, metonyms
may be visual as well as verbal. The second definition of metonymy is that
this “stylistic figure works according to a process of transfer of denom-
ination by means of which an object is designated by a term other than
one that usually belongs to it.”7 In essence, metonymy is the relation of
a part to a whole, a cause for its effect, a content to its container, etc.
The third definition of metonymy is that which “exploits relationships of
contiguity between things, not words: between a thing and its attributes, its
environment, and its adjuncts.”8
It is important to be aware of the techniques of metaphor and met-
onymy because they can be and are used by members of governments and
administrative bureaucracies to create and maintain ideological status quo
or to influence the apparent logic of a situation they wish to influence. In
this way a dominant logic is established and maintained. Some specific
examples of these techniques may be found in the opinions and decisions
of the Supreme Court of the United States. Citizens are effected when
meaning is transformed, meanings are transferred from one area to another,
or conceptual transformations occur. Whenever a conceptual transforma-
tion is created, since there is always something conceptual lost, a gap in
meaning is created in the conceptual framework. In turn, law attempts
to fill this gap in the most linear logical way. Within these attempts
to close the gaps, covert reasoning takes place producing overt judge-
ments.

5 J. Dor, Introduction to the Reading of Lacan, (Northvale, New Jersey, and London:
Jason Aronson Inc. 1997), 46.
6 D. Chandler, supra, Sec. 8, 1.
7 J. Dor, supra, 50.
8 K. Silverman, supra, 111.
 METAPHOR AND METONYMY 217

One particular case to examine that is rife with metaphorical and meto-
nomical transformations is R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, Minnesota. This
case deals with the validity of St. Paul Minnesota’s Bias Motivated Crime
ordinance. The law states:
Whoever places on public property a symbol, object, appellation, characterization or graf-
fiti, including but not limited to a burning cross or Nazi swastika, which one knows or has
reasonable ground to know to arouse anger, alarm or resentment in others on the basis of
race, color, creed, religion or gender commits disorderly conduct and shall be guilty of a
misdemeanor.

On June 21, 1990 the petitioner made a crude cross out of table legs and
burned the cross inside the fenced yard of an African American family.
St. Paul charged the juvenile petitioner under the Biased Motivated Crime
ordinance. The Supreme Court found this ordinance to be Constitutionally
invalid. The St. Paul Bias Motivated Crime Ordinance was found uncon-
stitutional, and the case was remanded to a lower court for a decision not
inconsistent with this opinion.
The Supreme Court established many premises upon which their
decision was based. The supporting opinions establish a wide variety of
premises that find at least some of their logical linearity based in the
linguistic techniques of metaphor and metonymy. The Court has long
held that it is against the First Amendment of the Constitution to pass
an ordinance/law that prohibits speech based on its content. Therefore
content-based regulation is presumptuously invalid. The Court saw St.
Paul’s Bias Motivated Crime Ordinance as a content-based regulation.
Essentially the Court states that disturbingly loud political speech may be
prohibited only because it is disturbingly loud, and may not be prohibited
solely because it is political.
The Supreme Court also relied on the Fighting Words doctrine to sup-
port their decision. The Fighting Words doctrine states that for the purpose
of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, the unprotected
features of words are, despite their verbal character, essentially a “non-
speech” element of communication. The Supreme Court makes fighting
words analogous to white noise, such as a “noisy sound truck.” As with
both the sound truck and with fighting words, the government may not
regulate their expression based on hostility or favoritism of the underlying
message expressed. The Court cannot allow speech to be prohibited based
upon the popularity or unpopularity of the speaker’s opinions.
The Supreme Court also states as a premise that burning a cross pro-
duces no “Secondary Effects” of speech. Secondary effects of speech are
when words can in some circumstance violate laws directed not against
speech, but against conduct. Therefore any regulation of such speech can
218 MARK FACCHINI AND PETER A. GROSSMAN

only be done without reference to the content of the speech. Secondary

effects do not include the emotional impact of the speech on its audi-
ence. The Court omits the fact that the cross in question was burned on
the front lawn of an African American family. Secondary effects protect
children from child pornography because the children are seen as the vic-
tims, yet the Court, through metaphorical and metonomical shifts does
not recognize the African American family as victims. The Court sees
the African American family as simply “emotionally injured.” The Court
also minimizes the pain caused by the cross burning to emotional pain
only.
The First Amendment does not prohibit St. Paul from imposing special
prohibitions on those speakers who express views on disfavored subjects.
Still, the Court does not discriminate against nor prohibit any single side
of any argument. Although the St. Paul Bias Motivated Crime Ordinance
reaches conduct that is unprotected, it also makes criminal, expressive
conduct that caused only “hurt feelings, offense or resentment,” and is
protected by the First Amendment. The Court here is saying that while
portions of the Bias Motivated Crime Ordinance are valid, the ordinance
also makes illegal some forms of speech based on content. Therefore
the Court sees the ordinance as fatally overbroad and invalid on its
face.
To the Court, an expressive act, like a chemical compound, consists of
more than one element. Although any act may be regulated because it con-
tains a proscribable element, it may not be regulated on the basis of another
(non-proscribable) element it also contains. Thus, obscene antigovernment
speech may be regulated because it is obscene, and not because it is anti-
government. The Court here is saying that to burn an object on someone’s
front lawn may be prohibited, but it cannot be prohibited “simply” on
the basis of the beliefs or the feelings behind the burning of a cross.
Once again, a metonymical shift has been performed changing the burning
cross and all that is represented historically and culturally, into “simply” a
“burning object.”
A case can be made that the Supreme Court is guilty of Ex Post Facto
reasoning. This being true, each opinion is written to include examples and
premises that support the decision and its inherent implied logic. Linguistic
chicanery is often necessary to modify meanings and distort examples such
that decisions seem coherent and cohesive, linear and logical. There are
several examples of these types of trickery within the Supreme Court’s
premises. The Court, within their premises, uses metaphor and metonymy
to tell and retell a story, to modify content and transmute meaning in order
to regularize their reasoning and to minimize the problematic nature of
 METAPHOR AND METONYMY 219

their decision making process, reducing decisions to cold static logic. The
Court would much rather appear to be making the only logical decision
that is mandated in the case description and the court’s explication and
examples.
An example of such a modification may be seen in the Court’s statement
that fighting words are analogous to a noisy sound truck. To follow the
Court’s reasoning, we would have to make a metaphorical leap here, trans-
forming the concept of a verbal utterance to a simple audio construction.
All the content of the utterance, the feelings, hate, ethnocentricity, racism,
and pain are expelled in the metaphorical transmutation. The burning of the
cross in the front yard of an African American family is metaphorically
reduced to fighting words, which is then reduced by a second metaphor
(e.g. “thus analogous to a noisy sound truck”).
The Court said: “let there be no mistake about our belief that burning a
cross on someone’s front lawn is reprehensible. But St. Paul has sufficient
means at its disposal to prevent such behavior without adding the First
Amendment to the fire.” The African American family has been replaced
with the term “someone,” and there is a metaphoric shift from the burning
cross to the burning of the First Amendment. The Court metaphorically
reduces cross burning to the burning of the First Amendment. The court
expresses the unconstitutionality of the ordinance by saying that allow-
ing the law to stand would be essentially equivalent to burning the First
Amendment. The Court here first metonymically reduces cross burning
to First Amendment rights, and then metonymically shifts the meaning
to the burning of the First Amendment. Metonymically, cross burning is
considered to be part of the whole of free speech. Then, the prosecution of
this cross burning under the ordinance is metaphorically shifted to stand
for the burning of the First Amendment. The concept of all racial hate and
pain caused by the cross burning is ejected, and an imaginative leap is
required to comprehend this linguistic construction in terms of burning the
First Amendment of the Constitution. The Court successfully shifts dam-
age from that of an African American family to that of First Amendment
rights. This is a reversal of meaning.9 The Court reduces cross burning to
something that only causes hurt feelings, resentment or offense. The court
has reduced all the real feelings aroused by cross burning to a cold logic
based on First Amendment rights.
The Court speaks about lighting a fire near an ammunition dump or a
gasoline storage tank as being especially dangerous. The law states that
such behavior may be punished more severely than burning trash in a
9 J. Butler, Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative, (New York and London:
Routledge), 52–58.
220 MARK FACCHINI AND PETER A. GROSSMAN

vacant lot. Threatening someone because of their race or religious beliefs

may cause particularly severe trauma or “touch off a riot.” As an example,
threatening a high public official may cause substantial social disruption.
With these ideas there are metonymical shifts from the pain and danger
felt by the African American family to pain and danger that might be felt
by the State if there were a fire in an ammunition dump, or perhaps if a
great city were burned. Yet again, the Court magically removes all the pain
and injury experienced by the African American family. The racism, the
implicit threat, and all of the underlying meanings created by the hundreds
of years of slavery and oppression are simply eliminated. While the Court
has ruled that special laws that protect the President of the United States are
Constitutional because his life is of special interest to the government, the
Court rules with equal fervor that the protection of this African American
family is not of special interest to the government.
To summarize the transformations and reversals the Court nimbly per-
formed in this case: the Court successfully striped the burning cross of
all of its ethnocentric, racist, and historic value (or lack thereof) and
reduced this complex, filled-with-meaning gesture to a simple compound
of action and content, fire, and the possible violation of burning objects
on someone’s private property. The Court also successfully stripped the
African American family of their pain, fear, trauma and the resurrection
of ancestral degradation, fear, pain, trauma. The Court used metaphor and
metonymy to transform these deep emotions into a simple case of “hurt
feelings and resentment.” By stripping emotionality away, as the court did
here, they were able to minimize the importance of micro-aggressions10
and feelings and maximize the importance of static dominant logic. The
Court denies much meaning while operating within a juridic linguistic
coordinate system.11
As has been demonstrated here, metaphor and metonymy can be used
to reverse, modify or change meanings. This rhetorical tool may be used by
anyone. But, it is most dangerous when used by an authority to linguistic-
ally validate its own ideology. Mindfulness is one main form of protection.
But mindfulness is not enough: resignifications must occur. One sug-
gestion for protection from metaphorical and metonymical reversals is a
constant contestation of meaning. By being aware of these linguistic tricks
and carefully listening for reversals of meaning, we may protect ourselves

10 K. Russell, The Color of Crime, (New York and London: New York University Press,
1998), 138–141.
11 D. Milovanovic, “Law, Ideology, and Subjectivity: A Semiotic Perspective on Crime
and Justice”, in Varieties of Criminology, ed. G. Barak (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger,
1994), 231–251.
 METAPHOR AND METONYMY 221

from accepting, as logical, the tortured and twisted meanings of anyone in

authority.

Department of Criminal Justice

Northeastern Illinois University Chicago
Illinois
USA
E-mail: d-milovanovic@neiu.edu