Alive and Posting

A post! Not to share my research, recent or current projects, or to discuss the election outcome (which, YAY!), but because I have long last found a concise explanation for the difference between a metonym and a metaphor. It was there all along, in The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms! (Ah reference sources, the joy of my heart and the facilitator of my procrastination! I am working on my thesis proposal right now - going to finish a really good draft today if the power of positive thinking comes through for me - but let's not get into that).

So, a metonym is a term that replaces the name of one thing with the name of something else closely associated with it. Some examples: Broadway for American theater, sweat for hard work, or the White House for the U.S. presidency. Metonymy establishes relationships of contiguity, and thus illuminates the "process of association by which metonymies are produced and understood" (ODLT).

Metaphor, on the other hand, establishes relationships of simliarity by using a word or expression to refer to one thing, idea, or action normally denoting another thing, idea, or action, so as to suggest some common quality shared by the two.

To put it more succinctly:

• metaphor: relationship of similarity
• metonym: relationship of contiguity
  

I'll just quote this one last bit for anyone interested: "The metonym/metaphor distinction has been associated with the contrast between syntagm and paradigm. See also antonomasia." And I totally would, except that I've already spent about thirty minutes exploring and writing about metaphors and metonyms, and I really need to get back to my thesis proposal. (Which, if you're interested and haven't heard me talking about it endlessly already, is currently titled "The Use and Decoration of Dressing Rooms in the Broadway Cast of Chicago the Musical." Stay tuned for more!)

Oh, ok, one more comment on metonymy... We've been hearing a lot about Wall Street, posed in its opposition to Main Street, and I would say that both are used as metonyms. I believe that Wall Street is meant to stand in for large financial institutions and the stock market, and the term used because the actual Wall Street and its practices are something far removed from most Americans' daily experience, but I'm even more unclear of exactly what they were using Main Street to mean. An idealized, ficticious image of a "mainstream" America? Working-class citizens? The free market? American businesses in general?

And, ok, one more word about the (updated) Grad School Vocab Project: Can you believe that liminal (of, pertaining to, or situated at a threshold) was not in my spell check's dictionary? I've had to add it. What are they teaching the young people these days?

Folklore and Resistance

It's hardly a secret that I am in love with Folklore. And why do I love studying it? Why study folklore at all, actually, in the face of overwhelming social problems, oppressive institutions, and endemic inequalities of race, class, gender, and sexuality? Why not sociology, or cultural studies, instead?

Well, for one thing, I believe that to study folklore is to address all of these issues, in a way that can actually make a difference. Maybe not on a broad scale, but to study Society or Culture as a whole - while certainly important - misses a lot of the reality of everyday life and practices. And within those everyday lives of everyday people, I think we can find a lot of answers, as well as further questions. What made me think of this today is a discussion of "infrapolitics" in Patricia Hill Collins's book Black Sexual Politics. And now we have a new word for the Grad School Vocab Project!

• Infrapolitics: The hidden behaviors of everyday resistance.
  

"Despite appearances of consent," she writes, "people challenge inequalities of race, class, gender, and sexuality through conversations, jokes, songs, folklore...and a multitude of everyday behaviors" (49). The study of Folklore is the study of everyday life - one where we can examine these everyday behaviors and resistances without judgment or censure. Rather, we can interpret them, using the words and meanings ascribed to these actions by the people who practice them, and use them to advance communication and understanding within and between individuals and social groups. Moreover, recognizing everyday forms of resistance is an affirmation of the worth of those that enact them, and a recognition of human agency. To study folklore is not to lose sight of institutional systems of oppression. Rather, by emphasizing and celebrating human agency, it is to see the possibility of change.

You can read more about folklore at the AFS web site.

Wait, what's that word?

If you're reading this, it's probably because you know me, and you know that I am very big on precision in language - it drives me crazy when I can't think of the exact right word. So you probably know exactly how excited I am to find out that dictionary.com has a Reverse Dictionary!

And um, I found this piece of awesome by reading the Lexico Blog. And yes, I will show my Word Nerd Society membership card upon request. This is what it looks like:

Grad School Vocab Project

Up until about a year ago, I'd always thought of myself as fairly well read, fairly erudite, and as having a fairly large vocabulary. I mean, I did read the dictionary and all (yes, just like Olive in ...Spelling Bee). My illusions were all shattered, however, when I started grad school. Every day I was coming across more and more words that I just didn't know, and couldn't work out from their context alone. Thus was born the Grad School Vocab Project.

The first word, which is my new favorite word, was quotidian. As in, "Some folklorists suggested using Quotidian Studies as the name for the discipline, because clearly, that's easier to explain than Folklore Studies." (Those silly folklorists!) When I got home, I ran to my computer and looked up quotidian. I had to look it up at least three more times, and devise sneaky ways of using it in casual conversation, before I could finally remember what it meant!

Quotidian: Daily or recurring daily. Usual or customary; everyday. Ordinary; commonplace.

Since then, I've been compiling a list of words from reading and discussion that seemed important to know in grad school. It's a work in progress, to be sure, but you can find it all here. I'll keep updating here, too.

Let me know if there are any words you like or feel should be included!