Metonymy in Modern Figurative Theory

Abstract

In the previous chapter we have seen that the majority of studies of metonymy in classical rhetoric treated the trope as a process of substitution mainly involving words and hence reducing the power of the trope to linguistic substitution. In addition, metonymy has been treated as a process of substitution at the lexical level only. I have shown that this is a narrow view in both respects: as will be demonstrated in the course of this book, metonymy is not only a process of word substitution or a process limited only to the lexical level. This chapter investigates the nature and function of metonymy in modern figurative theory. The aim is to see whether and to what extent modern accounts have been able to capture these two important aspects of metonymy. The word ‘modern’ in the title of this chapter refers particularly to the work carried out in the area of metonymy from the early 1950s till the present day. It was in the early 1950s that attempts began to apply structural techniques to the study of literature and figurative language. It is generally accepted that the structural analysis of figurative language has benefited the field of figuration in terms of systematisation and paved the way for the creation of modern rhetoric. This is by no means to discredit the works of I.A. Richards (1936) and K. Burke (1945), which to some extent revolutionised the study of rhetoric and gave it fresh insight.

Metonymy may in fact be more common than metaphor, and indeed is held by some to be the distinguishing mark of realist prose, yet it is seldom subjected to the detailed and lengthy investigations that metaphor undergoes. And not only is it not widely studied but most accounts of it are unsatisfactory.

Bredin (1984:45)