[[metonymy|Metonymy]] is harder to differentiate from [[synecdoche]] than you might expect. To simplify the conclusion: generally, metonymy leans towards physical or material relations, including *physical* part/whole relations. Synecdoche tends toward mental/categorial relations. (This is one reason why I think [[metonymy is — or might be — fundamentally indexical|metonymy is based on indexicality]]—or, at least, I think that's a helpful way to think about it.) However, since metonymy still has to invoke a conceptual frame or model to do it's thing, we run into problems, since a conceptual frame is, in a sense, a kind of "whole." ([[Group μ]]'s definition of metonymy as a double synecdoche — see the section below — seems to wrestle with this.) ## WTF does "Part-for-Whole" mean? If you try to Google the difference between metonymy and synecdoche, you'll probably see something about how synecdoche is based on part-for-whole relations, but metonymy is based on "contiguity." But already, that leads to ambiguity: ==what *kind* of "part-for-whole" relation are you talking about?== Are you talking about a **_conceptual_ whole** or mental category, or are you talking about an actual, **_physical_ whole**? Consider the difference between the "part-for-whole" relations: * "fir" ⤍ "tree" (a fir is a sub-type or category of tree) * "arm" ⤍ "body" (an arm is physically a part of a body) * "bee" ⤍ "swarm" (a bee is a part of a larger assembly of many bees)[^fir_tree_etc] All three of these are technically "part-for-whole" relations, but in the first one, we're talking about a semantic, conceptual or categorical relationship (which seems pretty synecdochic). By contrast, in the latter two, we're talking about relations between physical entities (which seems pretty metonymic). ### Physical/Material vs. Semantic/Conceptual Different researchers have articulated this difference in different ways: * [[Roman Jakobson]] differentiates between **"inner" metonymy** (part-whole and whole-part relations) and **"outer" metonymy** (including "cause-effect, temporal and spatial congtiguity, etc."). He considers outer metonymy to be "metonymy proper" (see [[Linda R. Waugh|Waugh]], [[Verbal Art, Verbal Sign, Verbal Time (1985)|Verbal]], pp. 163-164).[^Waugh] * [[Group μ]], in [[A General Rhetoric (1970)]], differentiate between **Π relations** (material relations) and **Σ relations** (conceptual relations). Their thoughts on metonymy as a double synecdoche are, uh... pretty weird, though. (See section below.) * [[Bredin 1984 - Metonymy|Bredin 1984]] talks about **structural** relations (relations within things) versus **extrinsic** relations (relations *among* things). He also uses the term "partonomy." * [[Seto 1999 - Distinguishing Metonymy from Synecdoche|Seto 1999]] differentiates between **taxonomies** (based on relations between mental *categories*) and **partonomies** (based on relations between *entities*). * [[Peirsman et al 2006 - Metonymy as a Prototypical Category|Peirsman and Geeraerts 2006]] differentiate between **taxonomies**, **assemblies**, and **collections**. They take physical part/whole relations as the prototypical "core" of metonymy (but note the caveat that we're talking about **_physical_** part/whole relations).[^Peirsman_still_unclear] ### "metonymy as double synecdoche" wtf It's worth including [[Group μ]]'s very weird idea[^weird_idea] that both metaphors and metonymyies as two different kinds of double synecdoches that leverage part/whole and whole/part movements in opposite directions. That is, both metaphors and metonymyies rely on a double part-whole and whole-part movement, but the movement directions are mirrored in precisely the opposite way. For Group μ, whereas **metaphor** particularizes down _from_ the whole to the part and then up *to* the whole again, in a movement like this: `><` (or `WHOLE>PART : PART<WHOLE`), **metonymy** goes in the exact opposite direction: it generalizes *up* from the part *to* the whole and _then_ it particularizes down, in a movement like this `<>` (or `PART<WHOLE : WHOLE>PART` ). - **Metaphor** ⤍ particularizes down, _then_ generalizes up `><` - **Metonymy** ⤍ generalizes up, _then_ particularizes down `<>` [^fir_tree_etc]:See [[Seto 1999 - Distinguishing Metonymy from Synecdoche|Seto 1999]] for the first two. [[Peirsman et al 2006 - Metonymy as a Prototypical Category|Peirsman et al 2006]] add in the bee/swarm example to distinguish assemblies. [^Waugh]: At first, this seems like the exact opposite of what Peirsman and Geeraerts claim, who think part/whole is the prototypical essence of metonymy. But the key is that Peirsman and Geeraerts focus on _physical_ part-for-whole relations, and not mental or conceptual ones. [^weird_idea]: See p. 121 of [[A General Rhetoric (1970)]] [^Peirsman_still_unclear]: Note if you think about this long enough, you're still invoking mental categories or cognitive domains or cognitive models. That is, you still have to know that an "arm" comes from the mental category "body." It's just that you also know that the relationships is one of physical part-whole. So, in a sense, maybe that "metonymy as a double synecdoche" thing isn't so weird?