Good to Know: Synecdoche and Metonymy

Synecdoche is a rhetorical figure, a trope, that allows a whole to be represented by one of its parts.

Metonymy, also a figure of division, refers to something by naming one of its attributes.


Example: as we recalled the events of September 11, 2001 in class, we created a complex compilation of memories, images, and emotional responses—some specific, some broad, some personal, some shared, some local, and some distant. The collective memory and associations related to the day and its events, combined with each individual testimony from the day—reports of shock, confusion, misinformation, speculation, horror, disbelief, anger, silence, interruption of routine, overwhelming emotion, and (especially among those who were on the cusp of adolescence) a sense of being protected or shielded—has come to be represented cogently and succinctly by just four characters: ‘9/11.’

The complexity that is revealed in compiling our memories and experiences specific to 9/11 raises an important question that we will revisit throughout the semester: can language, and specifically writing, capture the enormity of experience? This is a question posed some time ago by one of my dissertation directors, Dr. Michael Bernard-Donals, during a graduate seminar, and I have found it useful in thinking about the function of rhetoric and its related figures and moves.

I would argue that one way language attempts to capture the enormity and complexity of experience is through the employment of rhetorical figures, which ‘carry’ the complexity of the experience through the deliberate use of language. In our example from today, the use of the phrase ‘nine-eleven’ represents one part of the day, the date itself, and has come to stand for the whole of the experience: this is an example of synecdoche, and it is one example of how rhetoric ‘works’ to achieve a desired outcome.

By point of comparison, the naming of September 11th as ‘Patriot Day’ employs metonymy, as it recalls an attribute (or set of attributes) of the day—the way first responders and other sacrificed their lives to help others, the way firefighters raised the flag on the tilted spire in the ruins of the World Trade Center, the way members of Congress came together to stand on the stairs of the U.S. Capitol to sing “God Bless America,” the way the French newspaper Le Monde ran a headline that announced, “Today we are all Americans,” or the way the U.S. flag draped over the gaping hole in the Pentagon—now iconic artifacts that conjure a sense of patriotism and community.


For more on synecdoche and metonymy, check out Silva Rhetoricae, an excellent resource for anyone interested in rhetoric and rhetorical devices.