As far as synecdoche is concerned, it is spoken of as a «substitution of two terms for each other according to a relation of greater or lesser ex-tension» (part for the whole, whole for. the part, species for genus, singu-lar for plural, or vice versa), whereas metonymy is spoken of as a «sub-stitution of two terms for each other according to a relation of contiguity» (where contiguity is a rather fuzzy concept insofar as it covers the rela-tions of cause/effect, container/content, instrument for operation, place of origin for original object, emblem for object emblematized, and so on). And when it is specified that the synecdoche carries out a substitu-tion within the conceptual content of a term, while metonymy acts outside of that content, it is hard to see why the part for the whole is a synec-doche and the material for the object a metonymy— as though it were ‘conceptually’ essential for an object to have constituent parts and not to be made of some material.
As will be seen in 3.11.2, this confusion is due to an ‘archaeological’ and extrarhetorical reason. It will also be shown that the synecdoche could be limited to semantic representations in the form of a dictionary, reserving metonymy for representations in the form of an encyclopedia. But in effect the dictionaries’ embarrassment is the same as that of the classical manuals, which constructed a typology of rhetorical figures (still useful today for various aspects) that is quite admirable but riddled with ambiguities: (a) it considers tropes as operations on single words (in ver-bis singulis), precluding thus their contextual analysis; (b) it introduces, as we said above, the distinction synecdoche/metonymy on the basis of the unexamined category of conceptual content; (c) it does not distinguish between syntactic and semantic operations (asyndeton and zeugma, for example, are two cases of figures of words by detraction, where the first concerns pure syntactic distribution but where the second implies semantic decisions); (d) above all, it defines metaphor as a trope char-acterized by a dislocation or leap, where /dislocation/ and /leap/ are themselves metaphors for «metaphor», and where /metaphor/ is in its turn a metaphor, insofar as it means (etymologically) «transfer» or «displacement».
Because the tradition has left several disconnected notions, we shall have to look for a theory of metaphor in the moment when it is proposed for the first time, that is, when it is proposed by Aristotle.
3.3. Aristotle: synecdoche and Porphyrian tree
Aristotle first confronts the issue of metaphor in the Poetics (1457-b l — I458a17). In order to enliven language, it is possible to use, beside common words, also foreign words, artificial coinages, lengthened, shortened, or altered expressions (in the Rhetoric many of these verbal games, actual puns, will be analyzed), and, finally, metaphors. The metaphor is defined as the recourse to a name of another type, or as the transferring to one object of a name belonging to another, an operation that can take place through displacements from genus to species, from species to genus, from species to species, or by analogy.
Clearly, in laying the basis for a metaphorology, Aristotle uses metaphor as a generic term: his first two types of metaphors are in fact synecdoches. But it is necessary to look carefully at his entire classification and at the examples woven into the commentary if we are to find the origins of all that in the following centuries has been said on the metaphor.
First type: from genus to species. Following the definition of Groupe μ (1970), this type will now be called a generalizing synecdoche in Σ’. The example used by Aristotle is This ship of mine stands there, since standing is the genus that contains among its species lying at anchor. An example that is more obvious and more canonical would be the use of /animal/ for «men», man being a species of the genus animal.
According to Categories (1a1— 12), two things are named ‘synonymous’ when they are both named according to their common genus (so both a man and an ox can be called animal). Therefore a metaphor of the first type is a form of synonymy whose generation and interpretation depend on a preexisting Porphyrian tree (see chapter two in this book). In both cases (synonymy and metaphor of the first type), we are witnessing a sort of ‘poor’ definition. A genus is not sufficient to define a species, and it does not entail its underlying species. In other words, to accept /animal/ for «man», one should rely on an invalid inference: ((p q) q) p. Prom a logical point of view, Aristotle’s second type of metaphor seems more acceptable, since it represents a correct case of modus ponens: ((p q)p) q. Unfortunately, a material implication can sound very uncon-vincing from the point of view of natural language. Thus the metaphor of the second type (which is another synecdoche, the one that Groupe μ calls ‘particularizing synecdoche in Σ’) is a really unsatisfactory one. The example provided by Aristotle is Indeed ten thousand noble things Odysseus did, where /ten thousand/ stand for «many», a genus of which it is al-legedly a species. The clumsiness of Aristotle’s example is self-evident. In fact, /ten thousand/ is necessarily «many» only in a Porphyrian tree that is based on a certain scale of quantity. One can well imagine another scale oriented toward astronomic sizes, in which ten thousand, even a hundred thousand, is a rather scarce quantity.
In other words, though it may seem more or less necessary for a man to be mortal, it is not so necessary that ten thousand be a lot. This notwithstanding, /ten thousand/ suggests «many» intuitively and with an undeniably hyperbolic tone, whereas /men/ for «animal» is not intui-tively perceived as an interesting figure of speech — both examples de-pend, however, on the same logical scheme. Probably, according to the code of the Greek language in the fourth century B.C., the expression /ten thousand/ was already overcoded (as a ready-made syntagm) and was used to designate a great quantity. In other words, Aristotle explains the modes of interpretation of this synecdoche taking as already disam-biguated the synecdoche itself—a new example of confusion between the structure of language, or of the lexicon, and the structure of the world. The surprising conclusion is that metaphors of the second type (particularizing synecdoches in Σ) are logically correct but rhetorically insipid, whereas metaphors of the first type (generalizing synecdoches in X) are rhetorically acceptable but logically unjustifiable.
3.4. Aristotle: metaphors of three terms
As for the third type, the Aristotelian example is two-fold: Then he drew off his life with the bronze and Then with the bronze cup he cut the water. Another translation would have a bronze sword, in the second case, cut-ting the flow of blood, or life. These are, in any case, two examples of a passage from species to species: /drawing off/ and /cutting/ are two cases of the more general «taking away». This third type genuinely seems to be a metaphor: it could be said right away that there is some-thing ‘similar’ between drawing off and cutting, for which reason logical structure and interpretive movement could be represented as in Figure 3.1, where the passage from a species to its genus and then from that genus to a second species can take place from right to left or from left to right, according to which of Aristotle’s two examples one should want to discuss.
Taking away
cutting drawing off
FIGURE 3.1
This third type so truly seems to be a metaphor that many of the later theories work out of preference on examples of this type. Different authors have represented this third kind of metaphor using the following diagram, where x and у are respectively the metaphorizing and metaphorized terms (Richards’ vehicle and tenor) and where Z is the intermiediary term (the genus of reference) that permits the disambigua-tion as shown in Figure 3.2.
FIGURE3.2
The diagram accounts for such expressions as the tooth of the mountain (peak and tooth partake of the genus ‘sharpened form’) and she was a birch (girl and birch partake of the genus ‘flexible body’). Contemporary theories say that birch acquires a ‘human’ property or that girl takes on a Vegetal’ property, and that, at any rate, the units in question lose some of their own properties (see, for example, the theory of transfer features in Weinreich 1972). But at this point, two problems arise.
First, to define which properties survive and which must drop away, we must by rights construct an ad hoc Porphyrian tree, and this operation must be oriented by a universe of discourse or frame of reference (for one of the first assertions of this principle, see Black 1955). Second, in this operation of sememic intersection, a phenomenon arises that is new with respect to synecdoches or metaphors of the first two types. Con-sider the twofold movement that is at the basis of both the production and the interpretation of tooth of the mountain as shown in Figure 3.3.
Production
Sharp
Sharp
Peak Tooth Tooth Peak
FIGURE3.3
In a synecdoche, in which a peak were named as something sharp, peak would lose some of its
