“Oliy ta’lim muassasalarida ta’lim, fan, innovatsiya va ilmiy tadqiqotlarning
salmoqli natijalari: muammo va yechimlar” mavzusida Respublika ilmiy
anjuman to’plam materiallari 2024-yil 19-aprel kun.
Andijon davlat pedagogika instituti
universaljurnal.uz
87
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN METAPHOR AND METONYMY
I. A .Egamberdiyeva
Senior teacher of ASIFL
Annotation
- English language is spread all over the world and it is used widely. There
are many stylistic, lexical, phonetic elements in the language. Metaphors and Metonymies
are frequently used in literature and in everyday speech. A metonymy is a word or phrase
that is used to stand in for another word. Sometimes a metonymy is chosen because it is a
well-known characteristic of the word. We have often said that metaphor is fundamental, not
only to language but to cognition in general. Metaphor works because we notice a similarity
between two different kinds of experience. Generally, the similarity is in the relationship
between parts of the experiences.There is another, less well known, process that seems to be
equally fundamental to language and cognition, that of metonymy. Metonymy enables us to
use one part or aspect of an experience to stand for some other part (or the whole) of that
experience. Unlike metaphor which involves two domains of experience, metonymy only
requires one. Unlike metaphor which is based on similarity, metonymy requires contiguity
“closeness” of association. Most metonymies are so common we never notice them. In this
article we try to show the relationship between metaphor and metonymy.
Key words:
Metaphor, metonymy, “closeness” of association, primary function,
characteristic of the person, similarity, a part-whole relationship, innovative meaning,
expressive meaning, figurative, types of utterances.
They are “different kinds of processes”. Metaphor is principally a way of conceiving
of one thing in terms of another, and its primary function is understanding. Metonymy, on
the other hand, has primarily a referential function, that is, it allows us to use one entity to
stand for another. But metonymy is not merely a referential device. It also serves the function
of providing understanding. For example, in the case of the metonymy the part for the whole
there are many parts that can stand for the whole. Which part we pick out determines which
aspect of the whole we are focusing on. When we say that we need some “good heads” on
the project, we are using “good heads” to refer to “intelligent people”. The point is not just
to use a part (head) to stand for a whole (person) but rather to pick out a particular
characteristic of the person, namely, intelligence, which is associated with the head. The
same is true for other kinds of metonymies.
Thus metonymy serves some of the same purposes that metaphor does, and in
somewhat the same way, but it allows us to focus more specifically on certain aspects of what
is being referred to. It is also like metaphor in that it is not just a poetic or rhetorical device.
Nor is it just a matter of language. Metonymic concepts (like the part for the whole) are part
of the ordinary, everyday way we think and act as well as talk.
For example, we have in our conceptual system a special case of the metonymy the
part for the whole, namely, the face for the person. For example:
She’s just a pretty face.
There are an awful lot of faces out there in the audience.
We need some new faces around here.
Metaphor is based on similarity whereas metonymy expresses simple contiguous
relations between objects, such as part-whole, cause-effect, and so on.
These two figurative types can be distinguished because the connections made
between things are different in each case. In metaphor, there are two conceptual domains
and one is understood in terms of the other. For instance, when a boxer is compared to a
cream puff, as in "The boxer was a cream puff," two separate conceptual domains are
“Oliy ta’lim muassasalarida ta’lim, fan, innovatsiya va ilmiy tadqiqotlarning
salmoqli natijalari: muammo va yechimlar” mavzusida Respublika ilmiy
anjuman to’plam materiallari 2024-yil 19-aprel kun.
Andijon davlat pedagogika instituti
universaljurnal.uz
88
contrasted (athletes and food) and the fighter is viewed as similar to a pastry in being soft
and easy to devour. Metonymy involves only one conceptual domain in that the mapping or
connection between two things is done within the same domain. Traditional rhetoric defines
metonymy as a figure of speech wherein the name of one entity is used to refer to another
entity that is contiguous to it. This process of transferred reference is possible (because of)
a referring function. Thus, referring to a baseball player as a glove, as in “We need a new
glove at second base”, uses a salient characteristic of one domain (the glove part of the
baseball player) to represent the entire domain (the player). When the two things being
compared form a part-whole relationship (that is, when glove is part of the whole baseball
player), the metonymic expression is often referred to as synecdoche.
Many metonymic models depend on conventional cultural associations (e.g. “Let’s
not let Iraq become another Viet Nam”) which reflect the general principle that a thing may
stand for what it is conventionally associated with. This principle limits the use of metonymy
to only certain relationships between entities. For example, we can use the name of any well-
known creative artist to refer to the artistic creations of the artist as in “Does he like
Hemingway?” or “I saw a Jasper Johns yesterday” but not any product can be referred to by
the name of the person who created the product. I could hardly say “Mary was tasty” meaning
by Mary the cheesecake that Mary made.
Any given instance of a referring function needs to be sanctioned by a div of beliefs
encapsulated in an appropriate frame. Thus, one widespread belief in our culture is that the
distinctive value of a work of art is due uniquely to the genius of the individual who created
it. But we do not normally believe that such a relationship always holds between a cake and
the person who baked it.
Despite these obvious differences, both types of utterances present a common case in
strong support of a characterization of metonymy as a cognitive mechanism of construal with
a clear impact on nonreferential (stylistic, emotive) aspects of meaning appreciation. Both
cases feature an outspoken interaction of metaphorical and metonymic structures, revealing
that the major contribution to the realization of an expressive meaning is situated in the
activation of a novel metonymic link. In each case, a conventional meaning (literal or
figurative) serves as a base structure, which is exploited in a chained (scalar humor) or
singular (double grounding) pattern by a metonymic extension. Crucially, both types of
creativity support the optimal innovation hypothesis, according to which innovative meaning
extension requires a conventional semantic structure to serve as its reference point. As this
contribution has shown for two types of utterances, analysis of other structures may further
illustrate the way in which our urge to be creative is regulated by the cognitive principle of
optimal innovation.
REFERENCES:
1.
Barcelona, Antonio, ed. Metaphor and Metonymy at the Crossroads: A
Cognitive Perspective. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2000.
2.
Bell, Allan. The Language of News Media. Oxford: Blackwell, 199 I.
3.
Bergen, Benjamin, and Kim Binsted. “The Cognitive Linguistics of Scalar
Humor”. Language, Culture, and Mind. Ed. Michel Achard and Suzanne Kemmer. Stanford:
CSLI, 2004.
4.
Bredin, Hugh. “Metonymy”. Poetics Today 5 (1984): 45-58.
