metaphor, metonymy

Metaphor and metonymy are two types of trope, that is, “a word or phrase used in a sense other than that which is proper to it” (2), a non-literal application of language. In metaphor, “a descriptive word or phrase is transferred to an object or action different from, but analogous to, that to which it is literally applicable” (2). In metonymy, “a word or phrase denoting an object, action, institution, etc.,” is functionally replaced with “a word or phrase denoting one of its properties or something associated with it” (2). These definitions come from the OED, and they are useful as an outline or introduction to these tropes, but like most figures, metaphor and metonymy are best understood as historical concepts-in-motion; our notions of each of them have always been central to our theories of language, and they have evolved within that study as it expanded from rhetoric, the art of persuasion, to semiotics, the study of signs, which in turn became central to much of continental philosophy and to disciplines throughout the human sciences, including, of course, media studies.

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