Contents Introduction Similarity versus contiguity?

2.4. Contiguity involving similarity, 3: other cases

Other types of metonymy may involve similarity in an essential way. Panther (2006) discusses phrases like a Pearl Harbour where a proper name is used as if it were a common noun. He analyses this particular example as involving, first, a metonymic step to an event, and then a metonymic step from that specific event to other events of the same kind. Panther (2006: 181 at note 24) says that this second metonymic step goes from the specific event to events that are, as he says, “like” the original one “in significant respects.” Thus, the essential nature of the metonymic step is to traverse a similarity link.

There is even some appreciable similarity in the case of a sports team or a single athlete representing a country. Such representation only makes sense in the context of more than one country (or other social, political or geographical unit) being represented. So, there is a one-to-one correspondence between some countries and their athletes/teams. This can by itself be viewed as a minimal type of structural correspondence (hence similarity) — minimal in the sense that correspondence of relationships is not yet involved. But we can enrich the correspondence by taking competitive relationships between teams/athletes to correspond to competitive relationships between countries. The structural correspondence is extrinsic to any one country and its team/athlete, but this is not a problem as the similarity in metaphor generally can also be extrinsic relative to individual items involved (cf. the solar-system/organization similarity in the preface of Section 2).

In addition, in the case of a team as opposed to a single athlete, there is additional intrinsic similarity that conceivably contributes to the metonymy. The team is similar to the country in being composed of people who work cooperatively for the good of the team (and hence also for the country), just as the people in a country work cooperatively in some measure for the good of the country. Part of the very reason the team is viewed as representing the country may be that it has the features just mentioned, though this deserves further discussion.