Metaphor, Metonymy, Syllepsis

Metaphors

are like new maps of somewhere you thought you already knew,

but which have undiscovered places on them. Secrets and Surprises.

They reveal new aspects of the landscape,

and old ones in a new light.

“Refreshment for dry, thirsty hair…”

“Couch potatoes watching an ad for Walker’s Crisps”

“He warmed his hands on her midriff…

thought icicles might

melt her frosted

heart”

Metonymy does it too, but this time

by suggesting what you are looking at is just a part of something bigger.

Again there is a map, but this time it shines light on areas outside previous maps you had.

“In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread . . . “ --Genesis 3:19

“His authority thus battered, he exchanged his bowler for a trilby.”

“The chequered flag waved, and victory crossed the finish line.”

Syllepsis has similarities to the joke above –

it is a figure of speech “in which one word is used in two senses within the same utterance

and the effect is of putting together two co-ordinated constructions

with ellipsis. It is frequently used with comic or satiric effect,

eg ‘she went home in tears and a sedan chair’.

(K Wales, A Dictionary of Stylistics, Longman, 1989)

A good example is also provided by Guy Cook

in referring to an ad for Heinz Spicy Pepper Sauce,

which “shows two charred and smoking chopsticks over the copy

Delicious with Chinese, with Italian, with French, with caution.

The smoking chopsticks are the first enigma,

immediately resolved by catching a glimpse of the label

on the small bottle, bottom right.

The second brief enigma arises when we get used to the path

Adjective [ellipted noun]

Chinese [food]

Italian [food]

French [food]

…and try unsuccessfully to insert ‘caution’ into an adjectival box

next to the phantom ‘food’. No meaning pops out.

Can’t even find the adjective ‘caution’.

We were tricked down the wrong path.

But after a few milliseconds of confusion,

the brain steps back, tries ‘with caution’ instead,

putting caution in a noun box, and a fraction of a second later, ‘aaah!’.

Then milliseconds later ties that back to the smoking chopsticks.