Figures of Speech

A number of theoretical attempts at explaining the character of these tropes are described and discussed. A more comprehensive analytical perspective is argued for, however. Metaphorical and metonymic uses clearly connect to cognition and experience in general in a creative way, but in this study it is also pointed out that there are obvious parallels between metaphor and metonymy and the non-figurative types of relations in language systems termed hyponymy and meronymy. Accordingly, language users seem to operate with general types of semantic strategies.