She's flying high!

As part of my studies I once took a course in Metaphor and Metonymy. I found the subject matter interesting and engaging, the professor...not so much. Thank goodness for the cute guy that sat next to me during each lecture. There is no way I could have stayed awake without him (Thanks Andre!).

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. For those not familiar with metaphor, and especially metonymy, let me provide some insight(definitions provided by www.dictionary.com):

met-a-phor

-noun

1. a figure of speech in which a term or phrase is applied to something to which it is not literally applicable in order to suggest a resemblance, as in “A mighty fortress is our God.”

2. something used, or regarded as being used, to represent something else; emblem; symbol.

A metaphor is basically the substitution of one term or idea for another, seemingly unrelated, term or idea which in fact shares some similar characteristic. It's closely related to a similie ("he's as handy as a pocket on a shirt") but more forceful as it is a complete substitution rather than a comparison.

me-ton-y-my

-noun

A figure of speech that consists of the use of the name of one object or concept for that of another to which it is related, or of which it is a part, as “scepter” for “sovereignty” or “the bottle” for “strong drink” or count heads (or noses)” for “count people”

Similar to a metaphor, metonymy is also a substitution, but the two things should be related. In some cases the term or idea must be part of what it is substituting - in other words substituting a part for the whole(synecdoche).

As part of this course we studied how different cultures categorize things (you would need to know how things are categorized and structures within a culture/language in order to fully comprehend metonymy in that language).

Did you know there are actually cultures/languages that have only 3 categories for colors? Black, white, and red. What we English-speakers have a myriad of designations for (mauve, beige, ultramarine, etc.) some cultures only define by 3 labels.

Conversely, while English speakers have very few words to describe "snow", other languages have up to 40 words describing different varieties of snow. I find these things fascinating...

I think the peak(and pique) of my interest during this class came as we studied the subliminal thought processes in some of our most common metaphors. For example, if we look at some of our frequently used metaphors we seem to have a pre-disposed concept that emotions can be categorized in two ways: "up" = "good/happy" and "down" = "bad/sad"

"things are looking up"
"high spirits"
"cheer up"
"his spirits rose"
"he's on cloud nine"
"his spirits soared"
"walking on air"
"head in the clouds"
"riding high"
"lift his spirits"
"boost his spirits"

"He's feeling down"
"low spirits"
"down in the dumps"
"his spirits fell"
"his heart sank"
"depths of despair"
"he's depressed"
"he's really low"

Who knew? Take a look at what you're really saying sometime - you might be surprised.

References from Lakeoff, Kovecses, Yu