Metaphor and Metonymy

In this article metonymy and metaphor are described in relation to the notion of poetic meaning, the definitional feature shared by all types of figurative uses. Even if both these types of tropes will draw on encyclopaedic experiences, or pre- or extra-linguistic cognitive complexes, they are also formed in relation to established structures in a language system. In other words, their occurrence shows how intertwined linguistic knowledge and experientially based cognition will be. Moreover, it is arguable that at least “fully alive” metaphors will have a more noticeable poetic and figurative character than metonymic uses. The reason for this is that a metaphor brings together domains that are felt to be similar in some respect, although they are also clearly different. In this imaginative coalescence many features in the source are suppressed, and a kind of “fake” superordinate category is created: the generalised target meaning. It spans both the ordinarily concrete source and some other phenomenon, often something more abstract. The poetic or figurative character of metonymies is by comparison more inconspicuous, presumably because they constitute descriptive or referential shortcuts in relation to just one meronymically structured domain or chain of contiguous domains.