Synecdoche

Synecdoche (sə-nek-də-kē; from the Greek synekdoche which translates to "simultaneous understanding") is a literary device that utilizes a part of an object or the entire object is used to represent some part of the whole object. This trope can function in many ways as a literary device. It can allow larger groups to represent a smaller one or vice versa. It can also refer to a thing by the material it is made of or the packaging it is contained in (Mulvey 165).

Examples

In Popular Culture and Society

Sports

"Pittsburgh beat Baltimore by a score of forty-three to twenty-three." The words "Pittsburgh" and "Baltimore" are referring to the football teams that represent their cities, the Steelers and the Ravens, respectively.

Potpourii

"Wheels" for a car.

"I gave him a Pepsi." Where the word "Pepsi" represents the aluminum can that contains the soda inside of it.

"I'm out of bullets, give me another magazine." "Magazine" represents the container that holds the bullets the soldier needs for his firearm.

In Literature

William Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Julius Caesar

"Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears..." are the opening words of Mark Antony's famous speech during Act III, scene ii of the play. The "parts of a whole" connection comes from the ears that are part of the whole human body. Antony does not plea for his countrymen's physical ears; rather, he requires what they represent: their attention and their minds.

In Daniel Novak's article "If Re-Collecting Were Forgetting: Forged Bodies and Forgotten Labor "Little Dorrit," he examines the existence of synecdoche in Charles Dickens's Little Dorrit. "Synecdoche-the exaggeration and isolation of a body part so that its dominance of physical size and semiotic voice the essence of the entire character. Effacing the boundary between the material world of things and the organic structures of body, he packages all parts of the body, no matter how ostensibly central as “accessories” – loose members in the world of commodities" (21)

And Metonymy

Synecdoche and Metonymy are similar, but different. There is a great deal of uncertainty regarding defining metonymy and categorizing words as metonymical. Most definitions are vague, thereby giving the confusing implication that any word can reflect metonymy if used in the right context. In Hugh Bredin's article “Metonymy,” he supplies a general definition for metonymy which states that “metonymy is the transfer of the name of a thing to something else that is closely associated with it - such as cause and effect, container and contained, possessor and possessed, and so on; for example, "crown" or "throne" for monarchy” (45). Bredin asserts that such a definition is an “enumeration of instances” that poorly explains the exact function of metonymical words. The one aspect that all critics agree upon in regards to metonymy is that synecdoche is it's relative. More specifically synecdoche is a subsection of metonymy. In order to distinguish between metonymy and synecdoche, a person must examine the relationship of the words involved.

Similarities and Differences

According to Bredin, “synecdochic relations are structural, and metonymical relations are extrinsic – relations, in the one case, between particulars and their parts, and in the other case between particulars and other particulars” (54). “Synecdoche deals with the intra-relativity: the relation of the whole and its parts. The individual is so far finished as to be characterized by a part of itself” (252). While synecdoche focuses on intra-relativity (the relation of the whole and its parts), metonymy focuses on extra-relativity (the “intuitions of necessary relation”). In other words, "The difference between synecdoche and metonymy is that in metonymy the word you employ is linked to the concept you are really talking about, but isn’t actually a part of it.". In “A Grouping of Figures of Speech, Based upon the Principle of Their Effectiveness” by Herbert Eveleth Greene, “metonymy names things at a slight remove: instead of naming the thing itself, it names something associated with it, and trusts to the imagination to supply what is not stated, – both the thing unnamed and the relation which bridges the gulf between the two” (438). For example, “War is sad.” On the other hand, synecdoche deals with words or relations between words such as alternate names for the same thing. For example, nickel can be interchanged with five coin piece (Bredin 52).

"Every metonymy is a synecdoche, but not every synecdoche is a metonymy. This rule is true because a metonymy must not only be a part of the root word, making a synecdoche, but also be a unique attribute of or associated with the root word" (Modugno).

The White House, the Kremlin, and Downing Street can be used to represent the governments of the United States of America, Russia, and Great Britain, respectively.

References

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