Đề tài Figures of speech and linguistics

INTRODUCTION I. Rationale I.1. Figures of speech and linguistics It has been customary to think figurativeness is a linguistic feature exclusive to the language of literature, but it is actually not. When you ask somebody to “lend you his/her ear” or “give you a hand,” obviously you do not mean you are in need of those body parts. You are just using some figures of speech to express your need of attention and help. Such colorful and vivid expressions are innumerable in colloquial language, which makes figures of speech a pervasive linguistic phenomenon both in our daily discourse and in written language. Some people may address themselves to the query as to where the study of figures of speech should be in the family of linguistic studies. Figurative language, by definition, is the language we use to mean something other than the literal meaning of the words. So essentially the study of figurative language concerns the meaning and use of language, which are respectively the subject matter of semantics and pragmatics. Apart from that, it is also closely related to discourse analysis and stylistics, especially literary stylistics, since different forms of literature tend to have different probabilities as to what group of figures of speech to be used and/or to what extent and at what levels they should be used. Given these interrelations between the study of figures of speech and other domains of linguistics, it comes as no surprise that a linguistic major would become interested in this phenomenon. In addition, figures of speech, as artistic ways of using language, are appealing by nature and their study is rewarding in that it does not only enhance our understanding of the special and effective way in which other people use the language but also helps to improve our linguistic competence, especially our figurative and literary competence. I.2. Figurative competence and communicative competence The use of figures of speech being so ubiquitous, it is virtually impossible for a language learner to communicate successfully in the target language without an adequate command of them. Second and foreign language researchers have coined the term “figurative competence” to denote this special ability. Some of them, including Danesi (1992, 1995) and Johnson and Rosano (1993), hold that second language curricula must include metaphors, idioms and other figurative language items in order to instill in language learners a functional communicative competence rather than just a traditional formal competence. Danesi (1995), for instance, argues that second language learners do not reach the fluency level of a native speaker until they have knowledge of “how that language ‘reflects’ or encodes concepts on the basis of metaphorical reasoning” (p. 5). To put it more simply, researchers in the field imply that figurative competence is “likely to contribute positively to an overall level of communicative competence” (Littlemore, 2000). Nevertheless, it is observable that this linguistic skill is almost neglected in Vietnamese EFL classrooms. From the author’s firsthand experience as a college English major, throughout her academic years, only once were figures of speech discussed, as part of an account of Lexical meaning, a chapter in the book An Introduction to Semantics. This part covers less than four pages of the textbook, without a single accompanying activity. It was evidently “introductory” and would by no means be able to equip students with a full understanding of those few figures of speech used as examples, not to mention an adequate command of figurative language in general. Their sole purpose, as stated in the preface (Nguyen Hoa, 1998, p. 2), is simply “to equip the student with an overview of” semantics, which has traditionally been regarded as a highly “knowledge-centered” course. In the author’s skills courses, there was no place for figures of speech, either. These facts spurred the author of this paper to do research on figures of speech, with the hope of drawing EFL teachers and course designers’ attention to this particularly interesting and useful linguistic phenomenon. I.3. Figurative competence and literary competence The term literary competence was first introduced in the book Structuralist Poetics by Jonathan Culler in 1975 (p.114). It soon became the central concept of structural literary criticism and has been repeatedly referred to by scholars in various related disciplines (see Brumfit, 1981; Isenberg, 1990; Lazar, 1994; Aviram, 2004.) Under the strong influence of Chomsky’s generative model, where linguistic competence is put in opposition to linguistic performance, Culler holds that literature, analogous with language, is also a structural system with its own “grammar” – its own rules and conventions. A competent reader of literature therefore needs to internalize that “grammar” in order to convert linguistic sequences into literary structures. For example, there are special conventions in reading poetry that readers should be aware of, such as the rule of significance, the rule of metaphorical coherence, the rule of totality, the rule of thematic unity, the convention of genre, and other poetic traditions regarding the use of certain symbols and images. (For the full argument, see Culler 1975, p. 162) Among the conventions in literature, rhetorical figures are said to “lie at the basis of interpretation;” therefore, “training in rhetoric” is thought of “as a way of providing the student with a set of formal models which he can use in interpreting literary works” (Culler, 1975, pp. 179-80). This naturally leads to the conclusion that figurative competence is an integral element of literary competence, which makes studies of figures of speech particularly interesting and beneficial to teachers of literature in second and foreign languages. I.4. Substitutive figures of speech Rhetoricians have catalogued more than 250 figures of speech and reasons of space do not permit us to discuss all of them. While many scholars working in the field go along with Jakobson (1963) and Ruegg (1979) that “of the many tropes and figures ... none [have] proved so popular as the pair ‘metaphor’ and ‘metonymy’” (Ruegg, 1979, p. 141), it must be admitted that “over the years, metonymy has received much less attention than metaphor in the literature” (Carita Paradis, 2003, p. 1). While metaphor has been investigated from many perspectives, metonymy has been mentioned mainly in the province of cognitive linguistics (see Barcelona (eds.), 2000; Panther & Radden (eds.), 1999; Dirven & Pửrings (eds.), 2002). However, observation indicates that metonymy, as a rhetorical figure, along with synecdoche, deserves much more attention and research than what it has received so far; hence the focus of this paper on functions of these substitutive figures of speech. II. Scope of the study Although it is “impossible to isolate any single or special property of language which is exclusive to a literary work,” the fact is that in literature “language is used in ways which can be distinguished as literary” (Brumfit & Carter, 1986, p. 6). And it is this very literariness that creates trouble for readers in general and language learners in particular. Part of this literariness is formed by the special way in which figures of speech are used. While idioms or conventional figures of speech can be treated as separate linguistic items and their meanings can be deduced based on contexts, in reading literature, determining what a writer or a poet is referring to or implying when he/she uses a figure of speech is often not as easy. The reason is that it is his/her own figure of speech, one the reader might have never heard or seen before. This explains our inclination to investigate the figures under consideration in literary texts. However, given the limits of this paper, literature would still be too large a corpus to work on. Thus, we intend to examine these figures of speech in a special genre of literature – poetry – for the following reasons. Firstly, poetry is particularly rich in figurative language and can thus provide us with numerous examples of metonymy and synecdoche (although they are believed to function primarily in prose). A second reason, and probably the most important one, is that in poetry – “the form that most clearly asserts the specificity of literature, its difference from ordinary discourse” (Culler 1975, p. 162) – these figures of speech, together with other stylistic features, cause considerable difficulties for EFL readers and students alike. A survey carried out by Hirvela and Boyle (1988) on students’ attitudes towards literature genres reveals that poetry is the genre least enjoyed and most feared (Hirvela & Boyle, 1988, p. 180). Our study, while analyzing these figures of speech in poetry, seeks to find ways to help students to interpret these figures with less difficulty and more enjoyment. In helping them to analyze and appreciate these aesthetic devices in poetry, we hope to improve their knowledge of conventions in poetry and their literary competence in general. The last justification for our choice is that this form of literature, though special in many ways, is essentially an example of language in use. Hence, analysis of metonymy and synecdoche in this corpus will undoubtedly help illustrate their linguistic functions and conclusions drawn from the analysis will not only inform poetry readers, teachers and learners but also language learners on a larger scale. There is every reason for us to believe that once students are able to recognize and analyze those figures of speech in poetry, they will be able to recognize and analyze the figures in texts of other types. At the same time, the analysis will give us a better understanding of poetry in terms of stylistics. II. Aims of the study This study is carried out to serve two main purposes: 1. To explore the linguistic functions of metonymy and synecdoche with a focus on how these are used in poetry. 2. To give some suggestions on pedagogical issues relating to the teaching of these figures of speech in EFL skills classes and literature classes. III. Methods of the study With its subject matter being linguistic phenomena, this study is basically qualitative and descriptive. It is an attempt to answer several open-ended questions regarding functions, aesthetic effects, and pedagogical values of metonymy and synecdoche. These answers are grounded on a system of research methods, namely documentation, analysis and synthesis, all of which are used in combination in almost every chapter of the paper, though each of them prevails in a certain chapter or certain parts of a chapter. In the first part, we review the literature of figures of speech in general and the two figures of speech of metonymy and synecdoche in particular. Afterwards, we analyze the examples of these figures in some selected poems as illustrations of their functions. Based on conclusions drawn from those analyses, we pinpoint several ways in which foreign language teachers of English can teach these figures of speech to EFL students. Overall, the study is partly deductive and partly inductive. IV. Design of the study Apart from the introduction and the conclusion, the study consists of three chapters. Chapter I gives an overview on figures of speech in general and substitutive figures of speech in particular. Chapter II, the main part of the paper, focuses on two substitutive figures of speech, synecdoche and metonymy, providing an account of their definitions and linguistic functions, with each followed by an analysis of the figure of speech in poetry. Chapter III aims at raising some pedagogical issues concerning the teaching of these figures of speech and offers suggestions on applicable activities for use in EFL classrooms. CHAPTER I SUBSTITUTIVE FIGURES OF SPEECH I. An overview of figures of speech I.1. What are figures of speech? Answering this question, The Cambridge Advanced Learners’ Dictionary (2003) proposes the following definition: “an expression which uses words to mean something different from their ordinary meaning.” Along the same lines, The Oxford Advanced Learners’ Encyclopedic Dictionary (1992) describes a figure of speech as a “word or phrase used for vivid or dramatic effect and not literally.” The Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (2003)’s full definition reads, “A form of expression (as a simile or metaphor) used to convey meaning or heighten effect often by comparing or identifying one thing with another that has a meaning or connotation familiar to the reader or listener.” There are varieties of slightly different ways in which people define figures of speech, but just as Quinn puts it, “the simplest definition of a figure of speech is ‘an intended deviation from ordinary usage’.” (1982, p. 6). According to this definition, there are two criteria for an expression to be distinguished as a figure of speech: first, it is a deviant of ordinary language usage; second, it is used in such a way as to serve a certain purpose of the writer or speaker. These definitions and criteria might evoke a chain of questions: What is the “ordinary”, or “literal” use of language? Must an intention be conscious? How do you know a deviant when you see one? Quinn does not give direct answers to these problematic queries, but his analysis of the ordinary and extraordinary ways to use the coordinator and convincingly proves the existence of a system of ordinary usage of language, which we call “grammar.” Take the agreement between subject and verb in a finite clause as an example: When we say, “We were robbed,” we use were because it is the rule that we goes with were, because were is the ordinary way to conjugate the verb to be in the past tense for that person. But if we say, “We was robbed,” then was is employed against the grammatical rule and therefore must be treated either as an error or a figure of speech. At this stage, the existence of an intention plays a vital role in determining whether this is a figure of speech or not. If an elementary foreign language learner is the one who writes the sentence, in a test, for instance, then we can certainly conclude that it is a mistake. But when Joe Jacobs, a professional prize fight manager, shouted into the ring announcer’s microphone “We was robbed” on the night of June 21, 1932, we knew that it was far from being a mistake. (Quinn, 1982, p. 5) He broke the rule for his own purposes of adding emotion and emphasis to the accusation of injustice. I.2. Why are figures of speech employed? Figures of speech have traditionally been thought to function primarily as a kind of adornment or “make-up” used solely for the purpose of adding beauty to the language of the literary work. Therefore, if there was a line between the form and the content of a literary work, figures of speech would obviously fit in the formal features and have nothing to do with the content. This implies that we can remove them from literary works without affecting their meanings. However, the interwoven and interdependent relationships between form and content or meaning are such that it is actually very hard for one to draw a clear line between the two. Even if one is persistent in separating the two, he/she is still unable to prove the foregoing claim valid in all cases. Many figures of speech, especially tropes, do help to create some aspects of meaning that an allegedly equivalent non-figurative phrase cannot convey. An example of this is the catachresis in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Instead of “I will say angry words to her,” he writes “I will speak daggers to her.” (Cited in Harris, 2002). The catachresis here not only helps to express the meaning in a more vivid way, but also forms part of the meaning. Daggers communicates much more than angry words. It expresses the speaker’s hatred and fury to such a point that he almost wants to stab her with his words. It is a feeling that would take a long sentence or even a paragraph to describe. In cases akin to this, one rationale for using figures of speech, as Cacciari suggests when addressing the question of why speakers use metaphors, is because literal language is not very good at expressing the complexity of perceptual experience (Katz, Cacciari, Gibbs, &Turner, 1998). To put it more simply, figures of speech are employed for their capability to speak the unspeakable. The same is not always true with other figures of speech, though. In most cases, particularly when the figure in question is one other than a trope, there is often an alternative mode to express the meaning. For instance, Sherwood Anderson may have well omitted the “ands” in italics in the following sentences in the short story “The Corn Planting.” “He made drawings of fish and pigs and cows and they looked like people you knew. I never did know, before, that people could look so much like cows and horses and pigs and fish.” He could have replaced these with commas if he had obeyed the “anding” rules. The removal of the polysyndeton in this situation, however, deprives the sentences of “the sense of an ever lengthening catalogue of roughly equal members” (Quinn, 1982, p. 11), but at least the denotative meaning remains the same. In analogous instances, the figures of speech create an emphasis, amplify a meaning, draw a comparison or contrast, make a rhetorical point, or, generally speaking, express an idea in a novel and more colorful manner. Commenting on “Philosophy of Style,” Herbert Spencer proves that a principle governing our communication is “the principle of economy,” by which he means language users normally try to express more meanings with fewer words. This principle, as demonstrated in his analysis, applies for the use of words, sentences, and figures of speech. Their efficiency can be seen from two angles. First, they help speakers to pack much meaning into a small space. Second, they save readers’ energy and time by “[bringing their minds] more easily to the desired conception” (Spencer, 1852). For example, perceiving the Pentagon would take much less time than perceiving U.S. Defense Department. While the second phrase activates in hearers’ minds the complex political system, the first one only calls up a picture. And pictures are always easier to remember and recall than abstract concepts. I.3. Classification of figures of speech Rhetoric, in its attempt “to analyse and classify the forms of speech and make the world of language intelligible” (Barthes, 1967, p. 817), named various figures of speech and over the centuries the number has reached many hundred. Rhetoricians have also categorized these figures of speech basing on different sets of criteria. Scholars of classical Western rhetoric have divided figures of speech into two main categories: tropes and schemes, with the former being figures of speech with an unexpected twist in the meaning of words, the latter figures that deal with word order, syntax, letters and sounds of words. Others further classify them into smaller groups. Robert Harris (2002), for example, writes “[More than 60] rhetorical devices presented here generally fall into three categories: those involving emphasis, association, clarification, and focus; those involving physical organization, transition, and disposition or arrangement; and those involving decoration and variety.” Rick Sutcliffe (2004) in his “Figures of Speech Dictionary” yields definitions of 100 figures of speech and puts them into six categories: figures of grammar, meaning, comparison, parenthesis, repetition, and rhetoric. The classifiers of these figures of speech, however, admit, “More often the effects of a particular device are multiple, and a single one may operate in several categories” (Harris, 1980). The classifications above are therefore, theoretically relative though they are useful and convenient for learners. II. Substitutive figures of speech In his book Figures of Speech – Sixty Ways to Turn a Phrase, Arthur Quinn (1982) spared an entire chapter to discuss a group of figures of speech called substitutive figures of speech. He started by inviting the reader to interpret the bizarre title of the chapter “Reds in the Red” (Quinn, 1982, pp. 49-59). Afterwards, he suggested a seemingly endless list of different readings of the phrase, each made possible by our substituting these words by associated words. That is the essence of what is termed “substitutive figures of speech.” They are the figures of speech which substitute one word or object for another by virtue of their association, that is, a word for an idea, or a concrete/sensory phrase for an abstraction. An obvious distinction between metaphor and substitutive figures of speech is that while metaphors are based on similarities between the signified and the signifier, synecdoche and metonymy are based on their contiguity – their relatedness. This definition sounds too general because there exist many ways in which words are associated with each other. In Quinn’s system, there are two main types of association involved in substitutive figures of speech: one is based on the grammatical forms of words, the other on meanings. The first type includes enallage, with sub-types antaptosis, anthimeria, and hendiadys, which substitutes one grammatical form for another. The second type is metonymies, with one word being “substituted for another of identical form and related meaning” (Quinn, 1982, p. 52). It is noteworthy that the term metonymies in its plural form is employed herein as an umbrella term rather than as a separate figure of speech. Under that umbrella term, there are synecdoche, metonymy – in the singular form –, catachresis, and metalepsis, the first two of which will be discussed in detail as the main focus of this paper. Substitutive figures of speech Enallage - Grammar-related figures Metonymies - Meaning related figures antaptosis anthimeria hendiadys synecdoche metonymy metalepsis catachresis Table 1: Substitutive figures of speech examined in the study. Chapter II Some significant substitutive figures of speech in poetry I. Synecdoche I.1. Linguistic functions of synecdoche An adult native speaker of English may not remember how many times in his/her life he/she has heard expressions such as, “We need to hire some more hands” or “She’s got new wheels,” which do not literally refer to a hand or a set of wheels. Instead, they stand for the whole person or object – hand for the whole person and wheels for the whole car. These are the commonest examples of synecdoche, “the most basic rhetorical figure” (Culler, 1975, p. 180) and the simplest and probably “most useful of all metonymies” (Quinn, 1982, p. 56). Quinn is certainly correct when he says synecdoche is “the least problematic figure of all metonymies,” since the relation between the signified and the signifier in this figure is rather obvious. Although dictionary entries differ slightly in the wording of their definitions, they are unanimous in that the relation is basically part-to-whole. In The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Encyclopedic Dictionary (1992), synecdoche is defined as a “figure of speech in which a reference to a part or aspect of a person, object, etc, is meant to refer to the whole person, object, etc.” – or, in simpler words –, it is a figure in which the part is substituted for the whole. This is probably the commonest linguistic function assigned to synecdoche and also the one included in most, if not all, of the definitions. Other dictionaries, however, consider this definition inadequate. Synecdoche, according to them, encompasses a wider denotation. The Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary (2003)’s entry for synecdoche, for instance, is “a figure of speech by which a part is put for the whole (as fifty sail for fifty ships), the whole for a part (as society for high society), the species for the genus (as cutthroat for assassin), the genus for the species (as a creature for a man), or the name of the material for the thing made (as boards for stage).” Obviously, in this definition, synecdoche is not only confined to the part-for-whole substitution but also involves the whole-for-part substitution. What's more, it also includes species-for-genus/ genus-for-species, or, as termed by other people, member-for-group/ group-for-member relations. Then in the light of structural semantics, this figure of speech involves two types of sense relations between the tenor (the signified) and the vehicle (the signifier): part-whole relation and hyponymy. In the first relation, one is part of the other and in the second relation, one is hyponym of the other – its superordinate. (See Figure 1.) (a) (b) (c) (d) Figure 1: The relations between the signified and the signifiers in four cases of synecdoche. (a) part-for-whole (c) hyponym for superordinate (b) whole-for-part (d) superordinate for hyponym Both types of synecdoche are pervasive in the English language. We use roofs to refer to houses, hands for workers and heads for cattle, threads for clothes, and wheels for cars. In other cases, we use police to refer to certain police officers, and animal for a certain species of animal such as dogs or cats. Some, after a long time of being used, have become ordinary and the initially figurative meaning is now treated as literal and even included in the dictionary definition. For instance, the ninth entry of the noun wheel in Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary (2003) reads: “(plural), (slang): a wheeled vehicle; especially: automobile”. In yet another example, a human being is listed as the fourth meaning of creature in the same source. It is notable that the part-for-whole substitution can be identified fairly easily for its unusual usage of language, whereas a whole-for-part substitution often requires a more serious examination of the context to be detected. Without a specific context, the creature in “The creature was dying” can be treated as completely literal and ordinary, as we do not know to what it refers. Even if the context lets us know that creature refers to a certain animal or human being, the substitution does not strike us as too strange, because by nature, an animal or human being is a creature. The primary purpose of this type of synecdoche is probably to highlight the characteristics the signified has in common with other members of the same group. When referring to a human being as a creature, for example, the speaker might aim to emphasize his weakness and his vulnerability, as a living thing subject to changes of the environment and natural forces. As regards the purpose of the part-for-whole substitutions, Herbert Spencer (1852), with specific examples, gives a thorough and persuasive explanation: The advantage sometimes gained by putting a part for the whole, is due to the more convenient, or more accurate, presentation of the idea. If, instead of saying “a fleet of ten ships,” we say “a fleet of ten “sail,” the picture of a group of vessels at sea is more readily suggested; and is so because the sails constitute the most conspicuous parts of vessels so circumstanced. Whereas the word “ships” would very likely remind us of vessels in dock. Again, to say, “All ‘hands’ to the pumps,” is better than to say, “All ‘men’ to the pumps,” as it suggests the men in the special attitude intended, and so saves effort. Bringing “gray ‘hairs’ with sorrow to the grave,” is another expression, the effect of which has the same cause. This is probably true in most cases of synecdoche in everyday language. However, when employed by poets, the figure may have other artful effects, some of which possibly go well beyond the poet’s initial intentions. I.2. Synecdoche in poetry In poetry, synecdoche, especially the part-for-whole substitution, is also used in abundance. The reason for this prevalence lies in the nature of poetry, a form of literature which tends to concretize objects and feelings with pictures and details. Some of the synecdoches used in poetry are taken from ordinary language. The underlined words in these lines in the poem “Mr. Flood’s Party” by Edwin Arlington Robinson serve as a compelling example: “Well, Mr. Flood, we have not met like this In a long time; and many a change has come To both of us, I fear, since last it was We had a drop together. Welcome home!” (Robinson, 2002, p. 62) The phrase is reminiscent of various similar expressions we use in our daily discourse. We say Please drop me a line when we want someone to write us a letter; we ask Have you got a minute? when we want to know whether the other person has got a little free time to spare. In this case, a drop is used as a substitutive for some wine or alcohol, adding an implication that we haven’t had a drink together for so long, and thus intensifying the period of time they had been apart. The use of drop with its informality also indicates fellowship between the two people and helps us to imagine them as close friends. The use of synecdoche in poetry, compared to everyday language, is intentional and often more creative. The poem “Barter” by Sara Teasdale provides us with some examples. BARTER 1 5 Life has loveliness to sell, All beautiful and splendid things; Blue waves whitened on a cliff, Soaring fire that sways and sings, And children's faces looking up, Holding wonder like a cup. 10 Life has loveliness to sell; Music like a curve of gold, Scent of pine trees in the rain, Eyes that love you, arms that hold, And, for the Spirit's still delight, Holy thoughts that star the night. 15 Give all you have for loveliness; Buy it, and never count the cost! For one white, singing hour of peace Count many a year of strife well lost; And for a breath of ecstasy, Give all you have been, or could be. (Teasdale, 1992, p. 82) It is evident that the poem is larded with a variety of figures of speech; but let us focus on synecdoche only. One can effortlessly spot examples of the figure in lines 5-6 and 10. The faces, eyes and arms in those lines are obviously not the real actors of the actions. The faces themselves cannot look up; the eyes themselves are just eyes – they are not capable of loving or hating anyone; and it is not the arms that hold but the whole person. These are just human body parts, used to represent the people themselves. Although pointing out where synecdoche is employed poses little difficulty for readers, analyzing the effects of the figures might be much more problematic, clearly and deeply as they may feel that the “deviants” are beautiful. Following Dickinson’s advice that “Perception of an object costs / Precise the object’s loss,” (Dickinson, 2002, p. 50) we first try depriving the lines of their synecdoche, paraphrasing them in ordinary language, hoping to figure out the effects of the “deviant.” Without the figures, lines 6-7 would read “Children looking up, holding wonder like a cup.” Setting aside the changes in the rhythm and rhyme and taking into account the changes in meaning alone, we feel a substantial loss resulting from the removal of the word faces. What is taken away with that word is not simply an ornamental element of the line. It is a picture, or, to be more exact, pictures – pictures of children’s faces we have seen in our own lives, with their delicate skin and plump cheeks, their innocent eyes wide open with delighted surprise. What can be more beautiful than that? Simple as it is, that one word faces, with its power, is capable of persuading us to believe in the truth that the poem is telling us, that “Life has loveliness to sell.” So in helping us to visualize these pictures in our minds, the synecdoche effectively articulates the poet’s ideas and feelings about life, and should therefore be regarded as functional rather than simply ornamental. Some people may argue that “children looking up” is sufficient to create a picture and hence the author need not have replaced them with “children’s faces looking up.” However, without the word faces, the picture generated by the line is but a shape, a figure, a silhouette. It would miss many lines and colors, which are essential to the beauty of the picture. Particularly, it would fail to paint the children’s eyes – a significant image in the center of the face, making the soul of the picture. The word faces, therefore, can be said to serve as a lens, bringing a well-chosen part of the picture into focus and thus successfully helping the poem to speak to readers’ minds. If we repeat the process with line 10, replacing the signifiers by the signified, the line would be, “People that love you, people that hold,” which would not by any means sound poetic. In terms of content, the line would be much poorer as it fails to show us “the beautiful and splendid things” life offers. Love in itself is precious, but it is much too abstract to be sold, bought or possessed by anyone. People are not something you can own either. They are conscious beings who never completely belong to anyone, and they are in constant change. The majority of readers might therefore think that these items should not be included in this list of beautiful and splendid things we can buy from life. By contrast, “Eyes that love you, arms that hold” has an aesthetically different effect. Resembling examples of personification, the synecdoches are evocative of the reader’s personal experience and feelings. “Eyes that love you” call to our minds images of people we have loved at unforgettable moments in our lives. It brings back childhood memories of our mother’s worried eyes looking at us when we were sick or our father’s loving eyes when he kissed us goodnight. It may also awaken reminiscences of the deep sad eyes of a boyfriend or girlfriend when we parted from them, or the tearful eyes of a friend when we met after a long time apart. It may as well remind us of the jealous look on our child’s face when she/he saw us holding another child. Those eyes, with all their sadness and happiness, worries and jealousy, communicate a great deal more than the three words I love you! They are the realization of love, not unlike those warm, passionate, or protective hugs of our loved ones, which are similarly brought to our minds by the phrase “arms that hold.” More importantly, unlike love and people and even more so than looks and hugs, eyes and arms are concrete, visible and touchable, and therefore seem closer to buyable and sellable items. Although we cannot actually own them, at least we can keep pictures and feelings of them in our minds. The concretization produced by the figure at this point helps create a unity in both the content and form of the poem. Regarding this example, some readers would perceive “Eyes that love you, arms that hold” as cases of personification rather than synecdoche, which implies that the verbs love and hold are the deviants used for the purpose of attributing human traits to inanimate objects, in this case body parts. The argument looks plausible on the surface. But what is the purpose of such personification? Does the author really perceive, and want the reader to perceive, those body parts as being human? Clearly not. A critical reader should search for a more logical analysis of the images. The correct recognition of eyes and arms as the out-of-the-ordinary elements and the images as applications of synecdoche shed a different light on the poem, opening doorways to more accurate and insightful interpretations of the figures. Identifying a figure of speech requires more than just a mechanical application of theory about their functions. The reader needs to be aware of the unity of the poem and the author’s intentions as well. In the “Barter” examples above, synecdoche helps to paint pictures in readers’ minds, by which means readers are invited to interact with the poem to arrive at the theme. However, in other cases, the figure does not always rely on imagery to express the theme of the poem. The substitution in itself is directly relevant to the theme. A good example can be found in “Mr. Flood’s Party” by Edwin Arlington Robinson, which gives a detailed account of a party whose participants are actually the two selves within one person, Mr. Eben Flood. Reading the whole poem, one can see that it is built around a conversation, in which Mr. Flood plays the role of both the addressor and the addressee. If we might label the two selves of his as Mr. Flood One and Mr. Flood Two, the conversation can be presented in a manner similar to that of a screenplay, as follows: Mr. Flood One: “Well, Mr. Flood, we have the harvest moon Again, and we may not have many more; The bird is on the wing, the poet says, And you and I have said it here before. Drink to the bird.” Mr. Flood Two: “Well, Mr. Flood, Since you propose it, I believe I will.” Mr. Flood One: “Well, Mr. Flood, we have not met like this In a long time; and many a change has come To both of us, I fear, since last it was We had a drop together. Welcome home!” Mr. Flood Two: “Well, Mr. Flood, if you insist, I might. Mr. Flood One: “Only a very little, Mr. Flood -- For auld langsyne. No more, sir; that will do.” It is clear that Mr. Flood is talking to the second self inside him. The last words in the conversation even picture him pouring wine for the other Flood, who then stops him, seeing that the amount of wine is already sufficient. What a strange sight! The man is obviously not in a normal state of mind. Some people may conjecture that this man is drunk – too drunk to realize that he is alone. The deduction seems to be supported by a detail in the last stanza “He shook his head, and was again alone.” Notwithstanding, the last lines of the poem indicate that he is not only drunk (or possibly not drunk at all): He shook his head, and was again alone There was not much that was ahead of him, And there was nothing in the town below -- Where strangers would have shut the many doors That many friends had opened long ago. A drunken man would not be able to feel so sad and look so far into the town, into his own life and the past. Rather, he is so lonely that he has to talk to himself, pretending he has a friend to talk to. The entire poem observably aims at portraying the dual selves inside the character, and thus makes an effort to avoid specifying the doer of the actions. Synecdoche, at this point, fits just right to serve the purpose. “For auld lang syne.” The weary throat gave out, The last word wavered; the song being done... The weary throat gave out is employed instead of Mr. Eben Flood sang wearily. Some people may argue that it is the throat that emitted the sound but it is just an instrument, a medium, and not the actual agent of the action. Concerning this use of body parts as substitutive for the whole person in literature, Michael Toolan (1998, p. 95) suggests: [T]he motivations may be various; often an effect of detachment or alienation, between an individual and their physical faculties, is conveyed. Or a sense is created of the ‘diminished responsibility’ of someone for how their own body is acting. The figure in the example above seems to be exactly a case where the intended effect is to create a sense of detachment between the actual doer and his body part. The weary throat gave out entails that it is not Mr. Flood who sang; he did not sing to himself; on the contrary, he, or, as the author might have described, his ears, had been listening to that voice. This is indicative of Mr. Flood’s state of being two persons rather than one person, and hence emphasizes the absolute solitude of a person who is isolated not only from his town, but also from humanity in general. Everyone is a stranger to him. The only friend he could talk to is, so bitterly, his own self. The analysis reveals that part-for-whole substitution is the most common type of synecdoche in poetry. While some of them are taken from everyday language, others are highly creative. Though simple and easy to identify, synecdoche is an important element that constitutes literariness in the language of poetry. It helps to paint pictures, evoke readers’ feelings, express the author’s attitude and in some cases makes a direct indication of the theme of the poem. II. Metonymy II.1. Linguistic functions of metonymy Among the substitutive figures of speech, metonymy is probably the most frequently used and discussed. The word itself derives from the Greek word meta – to change and onyma – a name. One of the first figures of speech ever named, metonymy, parallel with many linguistic concepts, has been variously defined. The Encyclopedia Britannica (2004), for example, defines metonymy as follows: “figure of speech in which the name of an object or concept is replaced with a word closely related to or suggested by the original, as ‘crown’ for ‘King’ (‘The power of the crown was mortally weakened’) or an author for his works (‘I’m studying Shakespeare’)” The Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary (2003) yields a slightly different definition: “[a] figure of speech consisting of the use of the name of one thing for that of another of which it is an attribute or with which it is associated (as crown in “lands belonging to the crown”).” Some scholars attempt to define metonymy by listing the relationship between the signifier and the signified in this figure of speech. Quinn (1982, p. 52), for example, maintains that metonymy is a figure of speech which “substitutes the contained for the container,” “the effect for the cause,” “raw material for finished object.” However, some of the most frequently quoted examples prove that it is in many cases impossible to clarify the relationship between the substituted and the substitute simply by categorizing the pair. The crown is often employed to refer to a king or a queen, because it is the kind of head covering that is exclusively intended for kings and queens, and thus symbolizes the power belonging to those people. Yet no one definition of metonymy has ever included the substitution of clothing or jewelry for the person/people wearing it. And our effort would be in vain if we insisted on naming all kinds of relationships involved in the figure. It might be safer and more convenient to follow the seemingly too general yet more accurate and adequate definition given by the Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary (2003), admitting that the most important feature of metonymy is the association between the signifier and the signified. Having said so, we find it necessary to point out the differences between the association in metonymy and that in synecdoche. While many rhetoricians regard synecdoche as one type of metonymy, others distinguish the two by excluding the part/whole relation from the list of various types of association underlying metonymy. They argue that the signifier and the signified in metonymy are related but must not be physically or categorically part of each other. In some commonly used examples of metonymy, when the press uses Washington to refer to the U.S. government, or Downing Street to refer to the Prime Minister of Britain, the target domains are obviously not part of the source domains. They are not, as may seem at first sight, the contained to the container, either. Actually, Washington and Downing Street are just the places where the signifieds are based and have thus been perceived and used as metonyms of the signified. Apart from unquestionable cases such as these, there are confusing cases in which context plays an important role in determining the relation between the signified and the signifier. When someone says, “We need to hire 20 hands altogether,” it is a case of synecdoche, because in this context the only reasonable interpretation of hands is workers. However, the same body part can be used to present a number of abstract concepts in various instances of metonymy. It can substitute for help, as in “Can you give me a hand?” or control/ supervision, as in “They left the matter in her hands,” or personal possession, as in “The document fell in the hands of the enemy,” just to name a few. The ground or rationale for these substitutions is that we can do so many things with our hands: We can do manual jobs; we can hold things belonging to us (so that others cannot take them away); and we can also literally control things with our hands, either directly, with physical strength, or indirectly, by giving orders and directions using gestures. Countless comparable instances can be found in English, with concrete objects symbolizing not just one but a variety of concepts. In “I knew it from my heart,” heart indicates one’s innermost feelings, while the same word in “He won her heart” means love and affection. In such cases, the substitution is based on the symbolic use of the signifier, as Chitra Fernando (1997, p. 124) has it: “The heart symbolizes the passions, the affections of the soul ... while the head symbolizes the spirit, the rational intellect.” These symbolisms also explain the ubiquity of heart and head in the English language, from idioms such as break someone’s heart, lose one’s heart, steal one’s heart, have a good head for something and go off one’s head to compound adjectives such as kind-hearted, cold-hearted, heart-broken and level-headed. (Fernando, 1997, pp. 125-126) Graphically presented, the relationship between the signifier and the signified in metonymy and synecdoche can be seen in contrast as follows. Figure 2: Synecdoche and metonymy Fig. 2 a1 & a2: The signified and the signifier in synecdoche. Fig. 2 b1: The signified and the signifier in synecdoche. Fig. 2 b2: An example of the signified and some possible signifiers in metonymy. Fig. 2b2 The U.S. Washington The White House The Government The U.S. President Fig. 2b1 Fig. 2a2 Fig. 2a1 :the signified :the signifier II.2. Metonymy in poetry Despite the assumption that metaphor is the prevailing mode of thought in poetry, while metonymy is used chiefly in prose, it requires little effort to learn that metonymy is also employed in poetry at a relatively high rate, possibly second only to metaphor. As the cognitive linguists view it, metonymy is not merely a matter of words but a matter of thought. We can take the nicknaming of our childhood friends as an example. Very often, we use their most salient features to name them, because, apart from their funny side, those features are more suggestive of the people than their own given names. So it is apparent that the inclination and ability to give things new names are common even among us the laymen, not to mention poets, the most conscious and talented users of language. Many of the metonymies in poems are part of ordinary language. They are so conventional that we may not even notice that they are essentially figurative. For example, when William Blake (2004, p. 78) wrote I told my love, I told my love I told her all my heart (Love's Secret) we all know what love and heart refer to because love, like baby, honey, darling and sweetie, is commonly used as a term of address for loved ones, while heart conventionally symbolizes affections and emotions. When dealing with such one-to-one form-meaning pairs, looking at the context, readers can easily identify the target referents of these symbols. In other examples of metonymy found in poetry, the relation between the signifiers and the signified are not always one-to-one. One word may have several referents, as in the following examples in the poem “Richard Cory” by Robinson So on we worked, and waited for the light, And went without the meat, and cursed the bread; (Robinson, 2002, p. 59) Unlike the Blake example above, where heart and love cannot be understood literally, a literal reading of meat and bread as specific kinds of food in this example is correct, though inadequate. On the figurative level, we can interpret them as examples of synecdoche with meat being the hyponym of delicious and expensive foods that the people on the pavement cannot afford and bread representing the simple foods they have to eat to keep themselves alive. However, the polysemic nature of poetry allows, and in this case requires, us to grasp the meaning of these words on a deeper level. In the context of the people waiting for the light, which can be perceived as a symbol of a better life, of happiness., perhaps the meat and the bread do not simply refer to food, especially when due attention is paid to the use of the definite article the before the nouns. The implies that the referents are specific: they are not meat and bread in general but “the meat that people like Richard Cory are enjoying” and “the bread that we are having everyday.” At this point, they can respectively be conceived as concrete-for-abstract metonymies, in which meat and bread are correspondingly concretizations of luxuries and comfort accompanying wealth and austerity that occurs with poverty. This leads us to the next possible interpretation of these words: meat can be perceived as a representative aspect of a good life and bread of a miserable life. These metonymies, however, not only help to illustrate the ideas, making them more readily understandable to readers. In substituting the concepts of wealth and poverty, or happiness and misery, with meat and bread, the poet gives a significant implication about people’s views on life and their conceptions of happiness. Undoubtedly, people may think of happiness and wealth in diverse terms: some think of big houses, some of beautiful clothing, and others of expensive pastimes. The poet could therefore have chosen many other things instead of meat. His choice indicates that in the narrator’s eyes, a good life first and foremost means good food. The we in the poem are so poor they only think of their basic needs and thus have a very simplistic conception of happiness. This implies that generally material poverty at some point can cause spiritual poverty. These people’s simplicity makes them unable to understand Richard Cory’s suicide. To some extent, this lack of understanding from people in the town contributes to the tragedy Richard Cory suffers as a person who had to, in Paul Laurence Dunbar’s words, “wear the mask that grins and lies.” (Dunbar, 2002, p. 72). Had there been anyone among those town folks who could see what was behind Cory’s kingly facade, possibly he would not have had to put an end to his lonely and empty life. Obviously, the concrete-for-abstract metonymies in this poem communicate much more than they appear at first glance and contribute greatly to the meaning of the whole poem. The above examples are illustrations of poetry’s tendency to concretize abstract concepts. Nevertheless, the metonymy in the poem “Barter” by Sara Teasdale (1992, p. 82) is, by sharp contrast, an abstract-for-concrete substitution. Examining the opening line “Life has loveliness to sell,” there is apparently a metaphor or a personification, as some readers may want to label it, in this line, wherein life is treated as a person, more specifically, as a seller. And what does she sell? Loveliness. It is common knowledge that loveliness is not a thing that can be bought or sold; it is not even a thing. Rather, it is an abstract concept denoting the state of being lovely. If we approach the figure as an integral part of the whole poem, we will see what is really meant by “loveliness.” The second line offers a straightforward explanation – “All the beautiful and splendid things” –, and the rest of the stanza and the entire second stanza are composed of a series of pictures serving as concrete examples of these “beautiful and splendid things.” Loveliness is used herein as a metonym of lovely things – “beautiful and splendid things” – and the metonymy thus can technically be described as an abstract-for-concrete substitution. Why this metonymy? What is the purpose of the abstraction? Repeated at the beginning of every stanza, the metonym contains the major theme of the poem and undoubtedly deserves a meticulous analysis. It might be advisable at this point to project ourselves into the poet’s mind, to seek out the reason for her diction. The poet was not thinking about a specific thing or person or event. On the contrary, she was in deep meditation on life – life in its broadest sense – and was trying to arrive at somewhat philosophical conclusions about it. In this context, it is necessary to perceive things in conceptual terms, seeing them in a “stand-for” relation with abstract concepts. “Those beautiful and splendid things” was for that reason encapsulated into one word: loveliness. It is notable here that while beauty is seemingly synonymous with loveliness in this context, it lacks the strong subjectivity that loveliness suggests. Although both beautiful and lovely express one’s personal evaluation of something, to a greater or lesser extent, it seems that if one describes something as lovely, the description is more personal and emotional than when he or she says it is beautiful. Therefore, with the metonym loveliness, the author not only puts us into a contemplative mood, urging us to seek the meaning of life at a deep level, but also expresses and instills into the reader an appreciative and cherishing attitude towards life. This is the main purpose of “the letter” the author sends “to the world.” One of the problems in identifying figures of speech in poetry is that some figure may appear to be another and readers need to learn the rule of unity in literary texts and determine the type based on the context. The following stanza is an example. Helmet and rifle, pack and overcoat Marched through a forest. Somewhere up ahead Guns thudded. Like the circle of a throat The night on every side was turning red. (The Battle, Louis Simpson, 1960, p. 713) The first sentence in the first two lines is unmistakably out of the ordinary. The multiple subjects are inanimate and evidently incapable of moving, let alone marching. The question is, however, what part of it is the deviant? Is it the subject or the predicate? Is the author trying to picture something else, not the “Helmet and rifle, pack and overcoat,” or is he trying to enliven those non-living things by getting them to march? An alert reader of literature, with his/her reasoning, can rule out the latter possibility. He/she knows that the focus of description in this sentence is not those things worn and carried by the soldiers, but soldiers themselves. At first sight, they are metonymically used to replace the soldiers in almost the same way as crown is employed to substitute for monarch or red shirts for players of a certain football team. A closer exploration may reveal several differences, though. First, they are not a conventional metonym of soldiers, as the crown is a conventional metonym of a monarch. Second, they are not commonly used to refer to soldiers. Helmet and rifle, pack and overcoat, separately and in other contexts would by no means be indicative of soldiers, or to be more precise, they are not necessarily indicative of soldiers but can be used to refer to various objects, depending on the context. However, in this specific context of a poem depicting a battle, the combination of all four items helmet and rifle, pack and overcoat, which are typically worn and carried simultaneously by a soldier in a march, followed by the verb marched through the forest, is naturally interpretable as referring to soldiers. And the novel figure is therefore not at all mystifying but on the contrary intelligible to a relatively wide range of readers, as long as they learn the basic rule of unity in a literary work. Apart from its originality, the metonymy is also remarkable for its pictorialness, or its ability to create an image in the reader’s mind, which is one quality the trite crown-for-monarch metonymy does not have. The metonym, or, strictly speaking, the multiple metonyms in the first sentence of the poem, help portray the soldiers marching through the forest with their helmets and overcoats on and rifles and packs on their backs. The polysyndeton in the phrase makes the list of things even longer, emphasizing the fatigue of the people who are wearing and carrying these cumbersome and heavy things. It is notable that these things were not chosen at random. The author could have listed their boots, since they are closest to our legs and feet, which are actually the body parts that help the soldiers march. But he did not. Instead, he deliberately chose objects which can be seen from a distance, and more specifically, from behind, so that the picture is closer to reality and helps the reader see the battle with the character’s eyes, who was supposedly among the soldiers. In other words, the author was attempting to revive the whole scene in which he was playing a part, and the figure works really well in taking readers there. From afar, they can see it actually looks as if those objects are moving by themselves because readers as well as the I in the poem cannot see the people behind and inside them. An important task for the reader is to explore how the figure serves as a gateway to different interpretations of the poem on a deeper level. Why did the author substitute for the soldiers? There are many other ordinary ways he could have drawn that picture, the simplest of which is to describe it straightforwardly: “From behind, I could see the soldiers marching through the forest, wearing helmets and overcoats and carrying rifles and packs.” The difference the actual lines make is that they tell us the narrator in the poem did not see the soldiers’ faces. He did not see them. He just saw their covers and burden. They were too well hidden in their thick and weighty “armor.” They all looked the same, without faces, eyes, or names, speechless and almost lifeless. Even their movement was not evidence that they were living things. They were moving in the same direction and the same manner, like machines, with their various complicated parts: helmet and rifle, pack and overcoat. The implication is that these young men did not go to the battlefield; rather, they were driven there. They did not have soldiers’ hearts and minds. They just have soldiers’ cover, their military equipment. These findings provoke further questions which give the reader even more insight into the battle: What kind of battle was it where soldiers were used as fighting machines? What would be the result of the impending battle when the participating soldiers were already dead inside? And who drove them there? Why did the soldiers have to go to the battle against their own will? Given the context of the twentieth century, with many wars fought primarily for wealth and power, the poem was probably intended to articulate the poet’s attitude to an unjust war, but from a humanistic perspective, it can also win the empathy of people worldwide, regardless of their political backgrounds and their prior knowledge of the circumstances in which the poem was written. It successfully reveals the feeling that, at one or another point in any war, the people involved in it all share. After all, people are not born to kill one another. They are not born to become killing machines. Therefore, the failure of the men in the poem to feel like real soldiers, their lack of enthusiasm and determination, are indications of their human nature, rather than of cowardice or faithlessness to the cause, as some people might judge. They were plainly not so savage as to enjoy killing their own kind. And when being forced to do so in this war, they were not themselves any longer. They were not living any longer. In reality, many of them, like the soldier boy in the poem “Suicide in the Trenches” by Siegfried Sassoon (1992, p. 45), unable to cope with fear and emptiness and loneliness, did kill themselves, putting an end to, not their lives but their existence. The metonymy in “The Battle,” neutral as it may sound, does reflect and explain this upsetting truth, which is consistent with what is conveyed in the last stanza: Most clearly of that battle I remember The tiredness in eyes, how hands looked thin, Around a cigarette, and the bright ember Would pulse with all the life there was within. (Simpson, 2003, p. 551) The cigarette ember pulsing is in itself indicative of life, as it is closely related to breath and heartbeat, both of which are symbols of life. The image is thus employed appropriately to emphasize how little life there was within the soldiers: it was as small and as weak as a cigarette ember, which would soon die out, in the ‘black’ snow-covered wood. This echoes the ideas expressed in the first sentence’s metonymy. And in depicting the inner death of the soldiers, the metonymy in the first sentence, along with other figures in the whole poem, voices a powerful accusation against war: it dehumanizes people, and kills them spiritually as well as physically. III. conclusions It can be seen that these two figures of speech, metonymy and synecdoche, are significant from both linguistic and stylistic points of view. As linguistic phenomena, they are pervasive in the English language, spoken and written alike, and are attested to be not only a matter of language but also a matter of thought. As literary devices, while regarded as secondary in poetry, they prove useful and effective despite their occasional superficial simplicity, i.e., their being easy to identify. The preceding analyses of their occurrences in poetry, though modest in number due to the space limits of this paper, have indicated that the figures, especially the more creative ones, contribute greatly to the characteristic literariness of the texts, thus giving them a depth specific only to this type of discourse. They paint pictures, wake memories, stir up feelings and provoke inquiries in readers’ minds, which in turn urge them to dig deeper and harder into the hidden layers of the poems, one after another, till the truths, like gems, finally reveal themselves, giving them a satisfied Ah.... They are then overwhelmed with a pleasant surprise and an immense admiration people only have when they witness something beautiful and powerful. These are the true feelings the author of this paper experienced in the course of reading and analyzing the sample poems. Such illuminations, however, did not, and often do not, come right after the first or second readings. One may need to repeat the verses tens or even hundreds of times to him/her self, answering numerous whys, why nots and hows before reaching an interpretation. It should be kept in mind that when dealing with literature, especially poetry, no answer is the answer. The readings proposed earlier in this chapter likewise are not the only proper and “scientific” way to interpret those figures. Some people may identify with the writer; some may find that she has taken a wrong route or has gone too far at some points. It all depends. Each reader may have his/her own choice to finish the poem, as Coulson et al (2002, p. 4) stated, “A poet depends on the effort of a reader; somehow, a reader must ‘complete’ what the poet has begun.” What is argued here is that at least the figures have a spiritual and intellectual riches to offer readers, which could multiply in accordance with the number of readers, and therefore are well worth their effort. From another position, it is noticeable that those apparently highly personal and subjective interpretations do have their grounds. The analyses basically follow three steps: spotting the deviant, identifying the signified, and most importantly, exploring the effect of the figures. In some simple cases, the first and the second were done simultaneously. And all of the three steps were carried out based greatly on global readings of the poems as well as readers’ background knowledge. In the last step, one guiding factor was a series of questions repeatedly raised in almost every analysis: “Why didn’t the author write it in ordinary language?” “Why did the author substitute the signified with this but not that item?” “What are the purposes?” Seeking the answers to these questions entailed a great deal of work. In some instances, attempts were made to paraphrase the lines in ordinary language, or, in other words, to remove the figures from the text; in other instances, the reader proposed choices of words which could have been made in place of the author’s actual ones. Afterwards, the reader juxtaposed and compared the two versions, by interacting with the authentic versions, getting completely absorbed in them, letting them affect her feelings and thoughts, and in some cases projected herself into the author’s mind in order to discern the nuances of meanings the figures add to the texts. The process involved painting mental pictures and activating past experience, which could be factual, personal or literary and making connections between the figure and other details of the poem. At times it was necessary to dive deep down under the whole ‘iceberg’ to see its structure and how that structure determines the choice of one image or diction. By and large, the analyses relied largely on the reader’s rational understanding and intellectual comprehension, though most of them took emotional and linguistic reactions as their starting point. Chapter III Pedagogical implications I. Possible teaching contexts of synecdoche and metonymy While the terms synecdoche and metonymy sound foreign to English language learners in Vietnam, they are included in various curricula for native students. Some English language teachers in Vietnam may argue that these items are irrelevant to their teaching points, which are primarily concerned with the students’ development in communicative skills but not knowledge about the language. We can nonetheless prove this argument unsound by pointing out the unquestionable relationship between knowledge and skills, in which knowledge plays the more important, if not decisive role. As demonstrated in the preceding chapter, both of the figures discussed are so omnipresent in English that proper understanding of them is essential to language learners’ comprehension of authentic materials and their successful communication in the language. Some other teachers may attribute their failure to include these linguistic phenomena in the curriculum to their students’ inadequate competence. They assume that those receiving lessons on figures of speech in the English speaking countries are advanced, both linguistically and cognitively. In fact, various Language Arts course introductions and lesson plans found online show that the grade levels for which the courses and lessons are intended vary greatly from primary students upwards. The curriculum for Language Arts course for grade 4 at Washington County Schools (2002), for example, states one of their objectives as follows: “The learner will be able to analyze how poets use figures of speech to inspire readers to share emotions.” This indicates that figures of speech are regarded as important and accessible even to students at very low-levels. In any case, we can always adapt the teaching objectives according to our students’ levels and the overall aims of the course. The analyses of the two types of figure of speech above reveal that they are significant stylistic features of literature in general and poetry in particular. This has two pedagogical implications: First, we can use poetry in teaching metonymy and synecdoche; second, we have to direct our students’ attention to these figures while teaching poetry and other forms of literature, helping them to analyze the contribution of the figures to the value of the whole work. In the first application, they are an end in themselves; in the second, they serve as assisting devices for literary interpretation. However, both of the learning outcomes may be achieved simultaneously in one class. For the reasons above, we assume that the figures should be taught in both skill classes and literature classes to students of various levels either for their own sake or in co-operation with other teaching points. II. pedagogical values of teaching synecdoche and metonymy Teaching these figures of speech is not only indispensable in skill classes and literature classes but also beneficial to language learners in many other ways. Since they are both based on contiguity between words, they may aid low-level students in learning vocabulary, especially in making connections between their existing knowledge and new items and in organizing their vocabulary in lexical sets. Introducing metonymy and synecdoche in the classroom “can be an effective way of expanding student vocabulary. Once students learn the literal meaning of particular words, their vocabulary can be greatly extended if they are then able to use these words figuratively.” (Lazar, 2003, p. 1) Finally, while some people argue that these figurative lexical items can be learned by heart as new language items, it must be admitted that there would be too many of them to memorize. Teaching figures of speech is a good solution to the problem as it makes those items meaningful and memorable, and therefore, saves students’ time and energy and enables students to use them actively. In skills class, “activities incorporating figurative language can provide a useful springboard for integrated skills work.” (Lazar, 2003, p. 1) In speaking classes, for example, lessons involving the figures of speech can motivate discussions regarding connections between certain words or the rationales underlying particular substitutions either in everyday language or in literature. Besides, learning and practicing using idioms in speaking can be greatly enjoyable, too. In reading classes, exploring figures in reading texts can enhance students’ ability to identify referents and read between the lines. They can also use these figures while practicing writing, both at sentence and paragraph or composition levels. Lower-level students can start out substituting one word in a sentence with an associated word or thinking of situations where they can use some synecdoche- and metonymy-based idioms while stronger students can apply the figures of speech in their own creative writing. If the teacher uses literature in his/her skill classes, the benefit from learning metonymy and synecdoche can multiply. They not only serve as launch pads for improving students’ various language skills but also raise their awareness of language use – as opposed to language usage (see Widdowson, 1978 and Mc Kay, 1982) – in literature. In addition, when students try to work out the meaning of a metonymy or a synecdoche used in literary texts, they are taking the first steps in literary interpretation. An advantage of teaching the two figures of speech in question is that they are relatively simple and therefore can help to build confidence for lower-level students, who have never read literature in the foreign language before and may be disheartened if asked to investigate complicated metaphors. However, for teaching these figures of speech, literary texts should be carefully selected to match students’ language proficiency as well as their literary competence. In literature classes, especially poetry classes, studying these figures is particularly advantageous. As the analysis of the examples above suggests, although identifying source and target domains in the two figures is in most cases, a simple task, understanding the poet’s choice of imagery and diction is often challenging yet rewarding. Studying the figures will sharpen students’ interpretative competence since each example of the figure in poetry offers students with an opportunity to practice literary interpretation. They will learn how to make sense of images created by figures of speech, how to use their private experience to interact with the poem personally, and how to connect the figures with other elements of a poem to formulate reasonable deductions and conclusions. Finally, studying metonymy and synecdoche in EFL classrooms provides students with a window on the target culture, which has widely acknowledged as an integral component in language learning and teaching. Since associations involved in these two figures are mostly cultural specific, including these figures in the curriculum will help promote student understanding of native speakers’ conceptions and beliefs regarding various notions and raise their awareness of the interrelation between language and culture. It is advisable to allow students to compare their own perceptions with the target culture’s perceptions, to recognize differences and similarities between the two cultures. This recognition, in the first place, will facilitate their learning, directing them to make use of the positive transfer while inhibiting the negative transfer their mother tongue has on their foreign language learning. In the second place, it creates cultural tolerance, which is an indispensable characteristic of foreign and second language learners. III. Possible activities for teaching synecdoche and metonymy III.1. Making Connection As previously stated, while metaphor and simile base themselves on similarities between two domains, synecdoche and metonymy rely on contiguity or association between them. In order to recognize a synecdoche or metonymy, it is essential that students be able to perceive the signified as a referent of the signifier. They must be able to organize their vocabulary in lexical sets in which words are put in meaningful relations with one another. Therefore, we assume teaching students to make connections between words is crucial to the teaching of these figures of speech. The Making Connection activities we suggest below can be most appropriately used in the pre-figure phase, as a preparatory step or a lead-in for the lesson. They are applicable to various levels, depending on the topic raised and the way tasks are designed. III.1.1. Making Connection activities for synecdoche lessons III.1.1.1. Making Spider-webs FOOD meat This activity is quite popularly used for learning or reviewing theme-based vocabulary items. In this activity, teachers give students a spider web with a word in the center (Figure 3) and a list of words. Students fill in the web with the topic word’s hyponyms from the list. The web can also be partially filled to illustrate the instruction if necessary. In a higher-level class, teachers can give the students the topic word only and let them draw their own web. This activity either can be done individually or in pairs before a class spider-web is made with the whole class’s contribution. Figure 3: Model of a spider web In a follow-up bridging this activity with synecdoche, teachers can ask students to pick up a limited number of items that they think are indispensable in the web. The task can be made more meaningful with questions for group or pair discussion such as If you could have only three kinds of food, what would they be? Answers to this kind of questions will help them understand rationales behind synecdochical substitutions better. III.1.1.2. Identifying the superordinates The tasks in the two activities in this sub-group are opposite to that in the one above. Students are given a word and asked to find its superordinates. In activity (2a), the result is a chain of words with the word in the innermost circle being the hyponym of all the others. In activity (2b), students are required to find how many groups the word belongs to. The main aim is for students to be aware of the multi-lateral hyponymic relations between words, with one word possibly belonging to several groups. ? ? ? ? ? ? CAT Figure 4: Tasks in activities 2a (left) and 2b (right) is a/an ........ A ............ ........ B ............. ......... C ........... ........... D .......... ..................... is a/an ......A........... A is a/an ........B........... B is a/an .......C .......... C is a/an ...... D........... Teachers can alternatively ask students to name A, B, C etc. in the sentences following two models below. The sentences can be printed on cards for individual, pair work or group work, or written on the board for class discussions. Figure 5: Alternative tasks in Activity 2a (left) and 2b (right) III.1.1.3. Naming parts of things This activity is frequently used in teaching vocabulary, especially in teaching concrete items. Often, a necessary teaching aid is a picture (like the one in figure 6), or a sketch made by either teacher or students, in which parts of the objects are labeled. While naming every part of the object is helpful in enriching or/and consolidating students’ vocabulary, it is not compulsory in this activity. Attention should instead be drawn to the most salient part(s) of the object, which can substitute for the whole object in a synecdoche. Sails Boat Gunwale Figure 6: An example of visual aid in activity 3. This can be a good stepping-stone for the part-for-whole substitution practice, where students are asked to replace a given word denoting an object in a sentence with one of its parts, then explain their choice or discuss the conventional substitution in pairs or groups. For examples, they should be able to point out the reason why sail can substitute for boat while gunwale cannot, or why hand is the best substitutive for man in one sentence and head is a better choice in another. Added to the three activities above, there are several other applicable activities such as the word-grouping activity, where students put words from a list into different categories, or the old yet useful odd-man-out activity. III.1.2. Making Connection activities for metonymy lessons III.1.2.1. Matching the associated words Familiar as it is, this activity is exploitable as a preliminary activity for a lesson on metonymy. Besides matching associated words from two columns, students should also be required to clarify their choices either by discussing in pairs, in groups or by making sentences with both of the words. In a less controlled variation of this activity, students can be asked to identify associated pairs from a list of words. The two activities are useful in raising students’ awareness of diverse kinds of associations between words. They can be a list of abstract concepts and concrete objects, or a list of objects and objects owners, or a list of events and places/time, etc. or a combination of them all. III.1.2.2. Brainstorming associated words This activity requires students to find words related to a given one. Again, justification is necessary. A picture or sketch could be a useful trigger. To bring the activity closer to the purpose of teaching metonymy, teachers can limit the number of words in form of a question such as “What are the first three things you think of relating to ?” Lazar (2003) frequently resorts to this type of activity as a lead-in to the lesson on metonymy-based figurative language. She organizes discussions that call for students’ ideas on concepts related to parts of the body (pp. 8-9) and certain colors (pp. 44-45), which could be very interesting and culture-enriching in multinational classes. In EFL monolingual classes, we can elicit associations in students’ culture first, then what they know about similar ones in English, which would help to raise their awareness of cultural similarities and differences between the two languages and two cultures as well. ? ? ? love ? Figure 7: Sketch as a visual aid in brainstorming associated words III.1.2.3. Naming game Playing this game, each student will make up a different name for a person as required by the teacher, using the most salient characteristics of the person such as a special physical trait, a type of clothing he/she often wears, or his/her prominent qualities. It is important that teachers remind students that comparisons are not accepted as the ground for their naming, except when metaphor is taught alongside metonymy. Then the whole class would vote for the most interesting names. Alternatively, teachers can give each group a list of people students all know. Then one student chooses a person to name, and other group members will guess whose the name is. While allowing students to have fun, the activity brings home to students the underlying logic of metonymy and thus makes the theory readily comprehensible. III.2. Teaching metonymy and synecdoche in everyday language After preliminary activities on word level, teachers can proceed to analyze some examples of metonymy and synecdoche in colloquial language to give a brief introduction of these figures of speech. To our expectation, students, being so well prepared, will have no difficulties in comprehending the functions of these figures. The activities below will enable them to practice various skills while learning vocabulary and phrases relating to metonymy and synecdoche and enriching their cultural knowledge. When the teacher uses literary texts to teach these figures of speech or teaches literary texts that include examples of these figures, analyzing examples from non-literature can also be, as Ronald Carter and Michael Long (1991, p. 112) comment, “a good starting point” because, they explain, “In this case you need not feel that you are dealing with a sacred and revered object, or that there is a certain sublime quality about a figure of speech... For the purpose of creating awareness of how language is used, ‘She walks around like a tramp’ is every bit as much a trope as Byron’s ‘She walks in beauty like the night’. Thus, the classroom activities below can be a transitional step towards the analysis of creative figures used in literature in general and poetry in particular. III.2.1. Talking about metonymic and synecdochic vocabulary and phrases. We can design various task-based activities for students to learn meanings of idiomatic vocabulary items, which should be organized thematically in accordance with pre-figure activities. A brainstorming-related-words activity focusing on parts of the body should for example be followed by activities centering on idiomatic expressions associated with parts of the body. Common tasks such as matching, blank filling and multiple choice can all be applied to practice or review idiomatic expressions and their meanings. Guessing meanings of expressions is also useful. These tasks can be done in either pairs or groups, to boost communication between students. Teachers should however make sure that idioms used in these activities are new to the majority of the students so as to give them chances to practice making connections between words in performing the tasks. (For teaching ideas and detailed lesson plans, see Lazar, 2003; Gauger, 2002; Phung Thanh Phuong, 2003. For definitions and examples of thematic idioms, see Deignan, 1995; Bringas, 2000, 2001; McCarthy & O’Dell, 2003; Lazar, 2003. It should be noted, nevertheless, that not all of the idioms included in these sources are metonymic or synecdochic.) After students have learned meanings of new vocabulary items, it is necessary for them to be able to analyze the metonymy and synecdoche employed in the items. One simple task is filling the table below. Examples The signifier The signified The association Name of the figure Type of substitution She’s a queen in his eyes. eyes opinion/view eyes’ function is to see – to perceive Metonymy Concrete for abstract Table 2: Analyzing examples of metonymy and synecdoche This task can also be used with familiar expressions students already know. The purpose is not to teach them new items but urge them to explore the underlying mechanism of substitutions that make these items figurative. There might be disagreements among students at this stage, which would help to encourage meaningful communication and reinforce their argumentative skills. With a little adaptation, this table is applicable in teaching many other tropes as well. No doubt, idioms chosen ought to base themselves on metonymy and synecdoche. Those based on metaphor can, however, also be introduced to make a contrast between association and similarity as the grounds for these two groups of figures of speech, especially when we deal with topics involving both. It is important to differentiate figures of comparison from figures of association while giving students a flexible attitude towards the categorization of the figures. For instance, teachers should tell students that the example in the table above, from another perspective, can be perceived as a conceptual metaphor, in which seeing is equated to understanding. They should however be able to distinguish heart in She’s always in my heart from the same word in She lives in the heart of the city. The first example is a concrete for abstract substitution basing on “the emotions conventionally ascribed to that part of the body” (Lazar, 2003, p. 8), while the second is a metaphor that transfers the characteristic of the human body part, specifically its position, to a part of another object. III.2.2. Identifying, collecting and analyzing examples from everyday language These are less controlled tasks in which students are required to collect examples of synecdoche and metonymy in authentic discourses such as tape scripts or reading texts to analyze. The teacher can give students a set of texts to choose from. To promote their communicative skills, this activity can be done in pairs or groups with more than one pair or group working on the same texts, after which they can compare their work and discuss for further understanding of the figures. For higher-level classes, the task can be assigned in form of a project where students are allowed to choose texts from sources suitable with their levels and interests. Besides building up students’ analytic skills, the task will improve their reading competence in general and enhance their autonomy in learning while developing in them a feeling for language as a wonderful communicative device. With the non-conventional examples of the two figures of speech, students should be invited to comment on their effects in communicating ideas as well as in adding beauty to language of the text. III.2.3. Comparing idiomatic expressions in English and in Vietnamese Lazar (2003, p. 2) writes: The figurative language we use stems from the underlying values and assumptions of our culture or society, so that a common metaphor in one culture may not be understood by people from another culture... As teachers, we need to sensitize our students to the cultural meaning inherent in many examples of figurative language in English while encouraging them to compare these associations with those in their mother tongue In an attempt to encourage our students “to compare these associations with those in their mother tongue,” we can either ask them to find equivalent expressions in their mother tongue or translate some idioms or proverbs, or some passages rich in figurative language of this type into their mother tongue. The process can also be reverse. Students can be asked to translate texts from their mother tongue into English. A requirement in this activity is that translated versions must sound as natural as possible. Unavoidable discrepancies between source and target language texts will reveal disparities in cultural-specific thought patterns reflected in the way notions and ideas are presented. Most EFL classes in Vietnam these days are taught by Vietnamese teachers, which is one of their advantages in teaching idiomatic expressions. They can exploit their common cultural background with students to guide them in this activity. They know, for example, that in Vietnamese culture, the body part associated with kindness is stomach/ belly and not heart – the Vietnamese equivalent of kind-hearted is tốt bụng, which can be translated word-for-word as kind-stomached/bellied – and therefore will be able to draw students’ attention to such differences. However, this also means that they need to strive much to acquire the foreign cultural knowledge as an inseparable component of the language they are teaching. Discussing the “processing of Idioms in L2 Learners of English,” Cooper (1999, pp. 233-262) states, “Activities which compare literal and figurative meanings of idioms help students to realize the absurdity of the literal meanings and provide a link from the literal words to the nonliteral meaning. [These activities] would be particularly useful with idioms which have no first language equivalent or a totally different one.” The activities he suggests include “matching pictures showing literal and idiomatic meanings of an idiom, drawing or acting out literal meanings [see Lazar, 2003, front and back covers, for examples of drawings of literal meanings of idioms], making up stories or dialogues in which the literal use of an idiom creates a misunderstanding or a humorous situation.” EFL teachers in Vietnam can also resort to these interesting teaching ideas in their classroom while teaching metonymy and synecdoche in everyday language. III.3. Teaching synecdoche and metonymy using poetry For the last few decades, literature in ELT has experienced an upsurge in interest. Linguists and ELT scholars have identified multiple values of literature in both EFL and ESL teaching (see Povey, 1972; McKay, 1982; Brumfit & Carter, 1986; Carter & Long, 1991.) Yet, the majority of language teachers, for various reasons, still hesitate to use poetry in the classroom. They raise many objections against using poetry in the classroom, one of which is, “Most authentic poems are very difficult to understand, even for native speakers, as their meaning is rarely overt and their use of language is idiosyncratic.” (Tomlinson, 1986, p. 33) As a reaction to these objections, Brian Tomlinson (1986), Gillian Lazar (1994), Natalie Hess (2003) and Phoebe Nilsen (2004) demonstrate that poetry has numerous values, including educational value, affective value, achievement value, individual value, stimulus value and skills development (Tomlinson, 1986, pp. 34-35). By proposing practical ideas on how poetry can be used to develop students’ language skills, they prove its applicability to various teaching contexts, even in lower level and in mixed ability language classes. The key recipe to success, in their views, lies in text selection. Poems used for language teaching should be superficially simple and relevant to students’ interests. With a view to figurative language teaching, we are in complete agreement with Tomlinson’s statement: Many poems are difficult to understand completely, but they use stylistic devices (e.g. of pace, stress, focus, repetition, onomatopoeia, etc.) which facilitate global comprehension and effective response, and help the learners to discover covert meaning. Reading poetry can thus help to develop the important language skills of identifying and interpreting assumptions and implications. (Tomlinson, 1986, p. 33) Global reading of the poem Understanding specific figures of speech Understanding the message(s) of the poem This implies that an understanding of poetic devices, including figures of speech, can help readers to have a better comprehension of the poem as a whole. In our view, they are interdependent and mutually reinforcing. The analysis in the foregoing chapter shows that global reading of the poem, i.e. reading the poem as a whole, can reveal substantial capacity of metonymy and synecdoche in conveying complex ideas and expressing feelings that would be otherwise inexpressible. At the same time, proper comprehension of these figures facilitates overall comprehension of the poem and helps readers arrive at the deep meaning(s) of the poem (figure 8). Figure 8: Understanding specific figures of speech in reading poetry The analysis also suggests that several strategies, some of which will be presented below, can be employed in stylistically investigating examples of metonymy and synecdoche in poetry. By “stylistically,” we mean the analysis would be “concerned both with interpretation and with the codes themselves, with both what the text means and why and how it means what it does” (Cook, 1980, p. 152). Opposed to the widely held assumption among readers that interpretative competence is a gift endowed to certain people, we believe that these strategies can be imparted to foreign literature readers with appropriate instructions, just as Carter and Long (1991, p. 123) claim, “if students are regularly encouraged to explore equations between linguistic forms and meanings, then they are becoming more effective and accurate readers [of literature and other] texts in which language is deployed for create purposes.” III.3.1. Recording initial responses Poetry affects readers first and foremost by means of emotion. Therefore, readers of poetry should always approach it with open hearts and minds. They should get into the world of the poem while bringing their own experience into the reading process. As feelings students experience in this process are often short-lived and subtle, teachers should design activities that foster their initial responses to the poem and allow them to record and express these response to each other. Reading the lines, I see ______________________ (a noun) who/which is/are _______________(V-ing) ______________(adverb) and _____________(V-ing) _____________(adverb) in/on/at ______________(adj+place) in/on/at____________ (time) who/which is/are __________and _____ _____ ________(adjectives) I remember ______________________________ (image or memory) And I feel________________________________ The painting-mental-picture activity is designed for that purpose. As poetry speaks to us in language of pictures, readers would miss a lot if they fail to paint pictures in their minds while reading. This is also true in the case of interpreting synecdoche and metonymy, both of which being highly pictorial. Students should thus be encouraged to paint pictures in their minds with as many details as possible. After reviewing difficult and essential vocabulary items, teachers should ask students to close there eyes and imagine what they see, hear, feel, and think of while listening to the poem. Guiding questions can be given to boost their imagination and draw their attention to significant details. Students can also be required to take notes of what cross their minds basing on a card (figure 9). Figure 9: Model of a note-taking card used for recording initial responses Students will thereafter describe the pictures and share their initial impressions of the lines in pairs or in groups. In younger classes, where students are more active and find it funny and difficult to sit still and close their eyes for a while, teachers can ask them to paint real pictures of whatever crossing their minds while they read the lines. This can be performed either individually or in pairs or in groups, with some colored pencils and paper brought to the class by either students or teachers. Using these pictures as visual aids, students will explain to others what there are in their minds and how and why each image gets in there. These preliminary activities are essential in teaching literary interpretation, particularly in Vietnamese literature classes, where the dominant approach to literature teaching is still teaching “knowledge about literature” rather than “knowledge of literature” (Carter and Long, 1991, p. 4). Students may find these activities new, as they have been accustomed to just sitting, listening to the teacher and taking notes in literature classes, but this does not mean they will not enjoy them. On the contrary, they are very likely to be motivated because in these activities the most important things are their thoughts, their feelings, and their experience. They will be interested in exchanging their ideas with their friends, no matter how long they have worked with each other and how well they know about each other, because the conversation is concerned with something completely new that students would rarely have in their minds under other circumstances. These pictures and initial reactions will later direct, reinforce or attest students’ deductions when analyzing figures both linguistically and aesthetically. To avoid teacher influence, it is advisable that the activities are carried out immediately after students’ first or second readings of the poem. III.3.2. Identifying the “deviant” The next step in interpreting the figures of speech is to identify them. Often examples of synecdoche and metonymy are fairly easy to spot. However, when the poem under consideration is syntactically complicated or the line division is confusing, it is necessary for students to write the lines down as sentences in form of prose. They should be able to analyze sentence structures and normal uses of words in order to find the “deviant.” There are several techniques to help students at this stage. A simple technique is to ask guiding questions. For example, when teaching students the synecdoche in the first sentence of the poem “The Battle” by Louis Simpson, teachers can ask, “Who often march in the forest?” As for the metonymy in Teasdale’s poem, simple questions are, “What do people often sell? What are the common features of these things?” Answering these questions will show what the normal collocations are, and thus reveal the non-literal element of the poem. Barter Life has loveliness to sell, All beautiful and splendid things; Blue waves whitened on a cliff, Soaring fire that sways and sings, And children's faces looking up, Holding wonder like a cup. Life has loveliness to sell; Music like a curve of gold, Scent of pine trees in the rain, Eyes that love you, arms that hold, And, for the Spirit's still delight, Holy thoughts that star the night. How can one sell loveliness? It’s not a physical object. So why did the author use it? Why “sell”, and not “offer”? What can we pay in this sale? How can “eyes” love someone and “arms” hold someone? That should be people. Why eyes and arms but not other body parts? Another more student-centered approach to question making is to allow students to raise their own questions. Teachers can encourage them to make as many questions regarding language or meaning of the poem as possible (see figure 10). On the one hand, these questions can be productively used for pair or group discussions. On the other hand, question collections will give the teacher hints as to what is/ are problematic or interesting to a particular group of students, which will enable him/her to make appropriate adjustments to the content or focus of the lesson. Unquestionably, the most common questions will point out where the “deviant” is. Furthermore, this activity can establish in students the habit of asking questions – or, in Coulson et al’s words, starting conversations with poems (Coulson, 2002, pp. 8-18) – , which is one crucial step in the process of making sense of poetry. Figure 10: Questions making while reading poetry. Another useful activity is filling blanks to finish the poem. Ronald Carter (1986, pp. 112-113) uses this cloze procedure as “a form of prediction” in teaching prose. The same activity can be used in guiding students to identify figures of speech in poetry. Certainly, this activity can only be u