What is a "synecdoche"? Examples of using it in speech

The Russian language has a wide range of expressive means. One of them is a synecdoche. Examples of its use are found in Russian literature quite often.

For example, sometimes a single number is used in a speech instead of a plural.

Everything seemed to die in silence -

Trees, birds, reeds,

The eagle owl, the boar ...

Then - the thunder hit the drum !!!

Sometimes the use of the plural instead of the single indicates to us that the synecdoch path is used here. Examples of such a transfer of meaning on the basis of a quantitative relationship from one object or phenomenon to another are also often found in fiction or poetry.

Yuntsy think themselves unlikely

Not Rasmussen. Fate

Gives a lesson to them: at halt

To light a bonfire. One praise!

It happens that to designate the whole, the name of some part of it is used - it is also a synecdoche. Examples can be:

1. He knew that in the village of Nikishkino he was waiting for a roof and bread and salt.

2. In the herds we counted one hundred and twenty-nine heads of big-bones.

3. And he could not deceive them, seven pairs of naive eyes, that they looked with hope to him.

The use instead of the generic name generic also indicates that in this case a synecdoc is used. Examples of such a replacement are:

1. Eh you, the peasantry is uneducated! The Internet itself without a modem will not work.

2. The soul sings! Hello, friends - my childhood pioneering!

Very often, the name is used instead of the generic name. For example:

1. No, I will not go today to walk: my kopeck has dried up, alas ...

2. Waves beckon my sail forward ...

In the distance, the romantic calls again!

The synecdoche is very close to metonymy. Often literary critics argue which type of pathway to include this or that expression. This is due to the fact that metonymy is also built on the permanence of the relationship between the phenomena, although a little different.

Pushkin's line "All flags will be visited by us" on the one hand is considered as "all ships will come to guests". That is, there is a synecdoche - using the name of the part instead of the whole.

If we assume that the word "flags" carries the semantic load of the word "nation", then this is pure metonymy.

Thus, it can be concluded that the synecdoche is an expressive means that allows the transfer of meaning by the quantitative trait: from the singular to the plural and vice versa, from the part of the object to the whole. It also implies the substitution of generic traits by species and, on the contrary, species genera; Naming a single object or phenomenon more general or multiple, and the whole group - by one representative of the set.

Examples of synecdoche can often be found in ordinary, common life.

"Mom, do you have money to buy me an apple now?" - the girl in the store asks the parent. Using in the speech instead of calling cash, finance as a whole, the species substitution is the word "money", the child, without knowing it himself, uses a synecdoche.

And the elderly inveterate football fan sadly states: "Yes, the current fan of another went ... Not that before!" The whole community of fans in his speech is called as if it is one single person.

This way, ignorant people in linguistics, people use the path with the sonorous name of "synecdoche".