Metonymy

Metonymy (/mɪˈtɒnɪmi, mɛ-/) is a figure of speech in which a concept is referred to by the name of something associated with that thing or concept. For example, the word "suit" may refer to a person from the group commonly identified by wearing a formal attire, such as salespeople.
The words metonymy and metonym come from Ancient Greek μετωνυμία (metōnumía) 'a change of name'; from μετά (metá) 'after, post, beyond' and -ωνυμία (-ōnumía), a suffix that names figures of speech, from ὄνυμα (ónuma) or ὄνομα (ónoma) 'name'.
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. 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.
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.
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.
Metaphor substitutes the name by an analogy, rather than by an association.
Synecdoche uses a part to refer to the whole, or the whole to refer to the part.
Metalepsis uses a familiar word or a phrase in a new context. For example, "lead foot" may describe a fast driver; lead is proverbially heavy, and a foot exerting more pressure on the accelerator causes a vehicle to go faster (in this context unduly so). The figure of speech is a "metonymy of a metonymy".
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.
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. 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). In the phrase "lands belonging to the crown", the word "crown" is 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 using metaphors. 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.
Two examples using the term "fishing" help clarify the distinction. 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, and most importantly, trying) into a new domain (a conversation). Thus, metaphors work 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:
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.
Here are some broad kinds of relationships where metonymy is frequently used:
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, Chausseestraße and Pullach for the German Federal Intelligence Service, Number 10, Downing Street or Whitehall for the prime minister of the United Kingdom and the UK civil service, the White House and Capitol Hill for the executive and legislative branches, respectively, of the United States federal government, Foggy Bottom for the U.S. State Department, Langley for the Central Intelligence Agency, Quantico for either the Federal Bureau of Investigation academy and forensic laboratory or the Marine Corps base of the same name, Zhongnanhai for the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, Malacañang for the President of the Philippines, their advisers and Office of the President, "La Moncloa" for the Prime Minister of Spain, and Vatican for the pope, Holy See and Roman Curia. 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; K Street for Washington, D.C.'s lobbying industry or lobbying in the United States in general; Hollywood for the U.S. film industry, and the people associated with it; Broadway for the American commercial theatrical industry; Madison Avenue for the American advertising industry; and Silicon Valley for the American technology industry. 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. 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.
Metonyms can also be wordless. For example, Roman Jakobson argued that cubist art relied heavily on nonlinguistic metonyms, while surrealist art relied more on metaphors.
Lakoff and Turner 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 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.