Origin: (Lat.
conceptio, intellectio) is a metasememe that signifies a relationship of the particular and the general. Like metonymy, it is constituted by a substitution of contiguities. Synecdochē presents either particular things instead of a whole, or a whole instead of something particular. An example of the former case is the expression “Caesar conquered Gallia,” in which “Caesar” represents the members of the Roman army; an example of the latter is the sentence, “The Americans have landed on the moon,” in which the term
Americans denotes only the astronauts involved.
If contiguity is taken as the distinguishing characteristic of metonymy, synecdochē may be defined as one of its subclasses (Plett, 2000, pp. 191–192). Accordingly, Lausberg describes synecdochē as a metonymy denoting a “quantitative relationship between the word used and the meaning intended” (1998, section 572). Although Quintilian regards synecdochē as a trope in its own right, he acknowledges the kinship of the two tropes by stating that “it is but a short step from
synecdochē to
metonymy” (
Institutio oratoria, first century
ce, 8.6.23).
Several types of synecdochē can be distinguished according to their respective functions of generalization or particularization (Plett, 1991, pp. 71–72). The first type includes substitutions
- of the whole for a part (“America [the American team] succeeded in the Olympic games”);
- of genus for species (“He was lost on the waters [the ocean]”); and
- of plural for singular (“We [I] regret to inform you”).
The second comprises substitutions
- of a part for the whole (“There were some new faces [people] in the crowd”);
- of species for genus (“He had spent his last few dimes [money]”); and
- of singular for plural (“Columbus [and his crew] set sail for America”).
A special interpretation of synecdochē is given by Kenneth Burke, who, in
A Grammar of Motives (Berkeley, 1969, pp. 507–508) describes it as one of the “Four Master Tropes,” which include metaphor, metonymy, synecdochē, and irony. In Burke's system, synecdochē is connected to the function of representation and signifies relationships that on other occasions have been described as metonymic, namely substitutions of “part for the whole, whole for the part, container for the contained, sign for the thing signified, material for the thing made …, cause for effect, effect for cause, genus for species, species for genus, etc.” Metonymy, according to Burke, is a “special application of synecdoche.” Whereas synecdochic relationships are “convertible” and may function in either direction, metonymical relations are restricted to the substitution of quantities for qualities and are therefore unidirectional. Burke finds a “perfect paradigm or prototype” of synecdochē in the philosophical concept of a correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm, which conceives of man as a “little world.” Another instance, also taken by Burke (1969, p. 508) from intellectual history, is Jean-Jacques Rousseau's concept of a
volonté générale, which is assumed to “represent” the volitions of all the members in a society.
