Synecdoche: Difference between revisions

"Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears..."<ref name=Ref2/> 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.

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).<ref name=Ref4/> 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.   

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