All kinds of means of expressiveness make speech bright, add emotionality to what is said, and are able to attract the attention of the interlocutor or reader. Many expressive means are used in fictional speech, with their help writers create memorable images of heroes, and the reader can feel the depth of a fictional work.
Expressive means are designed to create an extraordinary world in literary works, but in everyday life, people, without noticing, use them. The expressive means of the Russian language in another way are called tropes or figures.
What is metonymy
One of the means of speech expressiveness is metonymy, which in translation from Greek means "replacement or renaming". Metonymy is a trope, meaning the replacement of one word with another, with which an association arises. It is also understood as a figurative meaning of the phrase. In this case, it is not necessary that the figurative word resembles an object, concept or action. Metonymy presupposes the contiguity of concepts and objects that are dissimilar to each other. These “different objects” include the residents of one house and the house itself (“the whole house started cleaning the territory” or “the whole house was handed over to repair the entrance”).
Metonymy is often confused with another trope - metaphor. This is not surprising, because a metaphor is also a figurative meaning of this or that word combination or object, but only similar, and metonymy is a replacement for adjacent words. The essence of this speech means is to name an important feature of a phenomenon or object, and not a whole meaning. So, for example, "I will not let you even on the threshold" is not understood in the literal sense, but in this case the threshold means a house.
Russian poets and writers often used metonymy in their works. For example, a couple of lines from the work of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin:
I read with pleasure Apuleius
But I haven't read Cicero
That is, only the names of philosophers are named, although it would be more accurate to use their works.
Types of metonymy
Depending on the contiguity connecting concepts or actions, the metonymy is temporal, spatial or significant (logical).
1. Metonymy of spatial type means the figurative meaning of certain objects, premises in terms of spatial arrangement or meaning. For example, when the name of a building is associated with people living or working on its territory. "Big plant", "high house", "spacious hall", here the name of the premises has a direct understanding, and "the whole plant received an award" or "the whole city went to the meeting" means that the main word does not show the place and premises, but specifically of people.
2. Temporary type of metonymy means that one and the same phenomenon or object can have a direct or figurative meaning, that is, on the one hand, this is an action, and on the other, a finished result. For example, the word "carving", and in the figurative meaning "decorated with carvings", "book edition" in the transfer "bright edition" (that is, a finished book). Phrases and expressions that designate a time period can indicate an event that occurs during this period of time.
3. Logical metonymy is the most common type. The substance is transferred to the object ("exhibition of paintings", "won silver or bronze in a competition"). The action is transferred to the thing, for example, the attacks and the people making the attack. The subject is transferred to the volume. For example, the direct meaning “broke the jar”, “lost the fork” and the figurative meaning “ate three spoons”, “drank two mugs”, “spent a whole bucket”.
The varieties of metonymy include synecdoche, which means the figurative meaning of a word or expression by the means that is formed from its parts.
