Metonymy, reflexive hyperbole and broadly reflexive relationships
I explore some relationships between metonymy and a special type of hyperbole that I call reflexive
hyperbole. Reflexive hyperbole provides a unified, simple explanation of certain natural meanings of statements such
as the following: Sailing is Mary’s life, The undersea sculptures became the ocean, When Sally watched the film she became
James Bond, I am Charlie Hebdo, John is Hitler, The internet is cocaine and I am Amsterdam. The
meanings, while of seemingly disparate types, are deeply united: they are all hyperbolic about some contextually salient
relationship that has a special property that I call “broad reflexivity.” Although a few of the types of meaning of interest have
metonymic aspects (or metaphorical aspects), reflexive hyperbole cannot just be explained by a straightforward application of
metonymy theory (or metaphor theory). Indeed, I argue instead for a dependency in the converse direction: that much and perhaps
even all metonymy is rooted – if sometimes slightly indirectly – in broadly reflexive relationships, though not usually in a
hyperbolic way.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.The phenomenon: Equations and heightened relational meaning
- 2.1Examples of equative sentences
- 2.2Assumed meanings of the examples
- 2.3Involvement of preparatory metonymy
- 2.4Relationships involved in the above heightened relational meanings
- 2.5Further explanation of the relationships
- 2.6Meaning variability and context-sensitivity
- 3.The Reflexive Hyperbole Theory and broadly reflexive relationships
- 3.1Hyperbole arising from strict reflexivity of various relationships
- Likeness
- Integration
- Contributes as part
- Leading-to, case-of, and indication-of
- The pattern so far
- 3.2Hyperbole arising from broad reflexivity
- 3.3Relationships that are not broadly reflexive
- 3.4Do all and only broadly reflexive relationships afford reflexive hyperbole?
- 4.Heightened relational meaning as already implied by metonymy?
- 4.1Does reflexive hyperbole arise automatically out of standard metonymic patterns?
- 4.2Could we exploit the hyperbole-as-metonymy view (HaM)?
- 4.3A general strategy? – Tailor-made, heightened metonymic patterns
- 5.Broad reflexivity of metonymic relationships
- 5.1Illustrations of the Metonymic Reflexivity Conjecture holding
- 5.1.1
part for whole and whole for part
- 5.1.2
producer for product
- 5.1.3Category-based metonymy
- 5.1.4Representation-based metonymy
- 5.1.5
possessor for possessed
- 5.1.6
result for action
- 5.1.7
potentiality for actuality
- 5.1.8Assignment-based metonymy
- 5.1.9Integration-based metonymy
- 5.1.10More indication-based metonymy
- 5.1.11Using thoroughly partonomic views of metonymy
- 5.2A problem case for metonymic reflexivity
- 6.Conclusions and additional further work possibilities
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
-
References
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Cited by (1)
Cited by one other publication
Barnden, John A.
2023.
Reflexive hyperbole, both ways.
Lingua 290
► pp. 103548 ff.

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