Metaphor and the Social World - Volume 15, Issue 2, 2025

Abstract

Metonymy has traditionally been studied as a cognitive and linguistic phenomenon closely linked to metaphor. Nevertheless, the connection between metaphor and metonymy requires further exploration. This special issue examines the embodied, social, and creative dimensions of metonymy, emphasizing its role in authentic language use and multimodal contexts. The contributions provide different scholarly and empirical perspectives drawing on naturalistic data from diverse genres and modalities, including spoken interaction, fiction, advertising, and corpus data. By focusing on metonymy and how it is used across different types of naturalistic data, we aim to facilitate a discussion about the various dimensions relevant to comprehending the full complexity of metonymy and its relationship to metaphor. Together, these articles demonstrate that metonymy is not merely a referential tool, but rather a flexible, embodied, and socially grounded mechanism for meaning making across various contexts, providing shortcuts to shared encyclopedic knowledge and social meaning, and as such deserving more attention in studies of figurative language.

Abstract

This article outlines the significant role that metonymy plays in how we understand our bodies. A primary way we experience our bodies is through enduring contiguous relations between bodily sensations and actions with various patterns of cognitive appraisals. These contiguous relations between bodies and minds are dynamic, causal, and not merely correlational. The links between bodily experiences and cognitive appraisals also suggest that metonymy is more relevant to understanding human bodies than are metaphorical cross-domain mappings.

Abstract

Recent research suggests more overlaps between metaphor and metonymy than is often suggested by theoretical and applied studies, which can frequently tend towards cleanly identifying between these figurative operations and presenting a neat set of (quantitative) results. However, differentiating between metaphor and metonymy in real-world contexts is notoriously tricky, and often leaves researchers in a position that demands choosing one or the other as the main focal point of the study. In this article, I reflect on the difficulty of disentangling metaphor from metonymy and vice versa, and some of the interesting research that has previously highlighted the fuzzy boundaries between them, including how these figures may “shape-shift”, across discourses, contexts, and in the mind. Overall, I suggest that concentrating more deliberatively on metaphor and metonymy’s blurred boundaries and shape-shifting tendencies is an important avenue for future research.

Abstract

Cognitive linguists have long argued that our comprehension of abstract concepts is primarily based on metaphorical or metonymic mappings from more concrete or familiar experiences (Lakoff & Johnson 1980/2008, 1999). Accordingly, metaphor identification commonly involves contrasting concrete senses of words with their contextual meanings. However, examples like a huge log spinning down into nothingness and Max opened a door into nothingness are reminders that, through metonymy, even highly familiar source concepts such as spatial areas can be targets grounded in abstract concepts. Both these instances evoke scenes in which the abstract notion of ‘nothingness’ is a space that physical entities move into.

This study highlights the complexity of figurative language and underscores the need for further exploration into how abstract concepts can ground our understanding of more concrete experiences. It also serves to bridge the gap between current metaphor identification practices and the directionality of metonymy. Focusing mainly on mappings in one direction can pose challenges for metaphor researchers, as they might mistakenly categorize such cases as metaphorical rather than as expressions of spatial relations. This is particularly relevant in contemporary metaphor research, which often relies on establishing the basic meanings of individual words to identify metaphorical relationships.

Abstract

This article explores the double metaphoric and metonymic use of the Danish word plet (“stain” or “spot”) in discourse about shame and moral judgment. Drawing on Danish corpus data and a close analysis of therapeutic interaction, the study argues that plet operates not only as a metaphor — grounded in the moral schema of “clean versus dirty” — but also as a metonymy, where a visible stain stands for the social and emotional consequences of past actions. In the corpus data, plet is used metaphorically to describe both temporary reputational damage (e.g. sports defeats) and more lasting moral stains. In therapy data, however, plet takes on a deeper, socially embedded function, expressing personal shame and the fear of social exposure. Here, its metonymic structure — as an effect standing for a cause — becomes especially salient. The analysis highlights how metaphor and metonymy work together to construct meaning in social contexts, and how their interplay can be creatively exploited in a therapeutic setting. By externalizing shame onto a physical object (a letter of concern), the therapist helps the client reframe a stigmatizing experience. The findings underline how metaphor and metonymy coalesce in a single expression creating layered meaning in social contexts.

Abstract

This study examines fear metonymy in one Swedish and one Japanese crime novel. A thematic analysis is employed to establish conceptual fear metonymies grounded in physiological effects, behavioural reactions, and body organs. The types of linguistic manifestations in the novels are analysed, along with their pragmatic function within the novels and narratological aspects of their use.

A total of 39 conceptual fear metonymies were identified, 14 of which have not been previously recognised in research on fear metonymy. The conceptual fear metonymies identified are largely consistent across the Swedish and Japanese novels, reinforcing the notion that human embodied cognition clearly exhibits cross-cultural patterns.

The linguistic manifestations of conceptual fear metonymies exemplify the “Show, don’t tell” technique in creative writing. Most of them are concise and literal in nature. Conventional phrases are predominantly metaphtonymies and exhibit some language/culture-specific characteristics. Creative linguistic expressions, meanwhile, reflect the author’s unique style and further emphasise the emotional state of the characters to the reader. In certain scenes, expressions based on multiple conceptual fear metonymies combine to generate a heightened level of intensity, whereas in others, a single expression effectively conveys fear.

Finally, fiction emerges as a highly conducive material for the analysis of emotion metonymy.

Abstract

Non-commercial advertising is an appealing genre for the study of the social implications of the use of creative figurativity, as it allows us to explore the creative strategies used to engage the addressee’s attention to take courses of action. The present paper focuses on the role of creative visual and multimodal metonymies and their interaction with metaphoric domains in multimodal advertising campaigns addressing substance use (smoking, alcohol, drugs). The data consists of a corpus of 50 advertisements. Results show the more frequent metonymies in the corpus are part for whole, effect for cause, container for contained and category for salient property. Metonymy typically supports metaphoric processes, is more frequently visual rather than multimodal and contributes to accessing scenarios and narratives that highlight the negative properties and effects of substance use. Creative uses of metonymy involve visual impact relying on the juxtaposition of metonymies which enable resemblance metaphors, elaboration of conventional metonymies, interaction with hyperbole and irony, and twice true metonymies.

This article reviews The Poetics of Time — Metaphors and Blends in Language and Literature97890272098709789027264664

This article reviews Feeling, Thinking, and Talking How the Embodied Brain Shapes Everyday Communication978 1 108 83904 4978 11 089 7956 6

This article reviews Figurative meaning construction in thought and language978 90 272 0705 0978 90 272 6102 1