Metonymy, reflexive hyperbole and broadly reflexive relationships

Abstract

I explore some relationships between metonymy and a special type of hyperbole that I call reflexive hyperbole. Reflexive hyperbole provides a unified, simple explanation of certain natural meanings of statements such as the following: Sailing is Mary’s life, The undersea sculptures became the ocean, When Sally watched the film she became James Bond, I am Charlie Hebdo, John is Hitler, The internet is cocaine and I am Amsterdam. The meanings, while of seemingly disparate types, are deeply united: they are all hyperbolic about some contextually salient relationship that has a special property that I call “broad reflexivity.” Although a few of the types of meaning of interest have metonymic aspects (or metaphorical aspects), reflexive hyperbole cannot just be explained by a straightforward application of metonymy theory (or metaphor theory). Indeed, I argue instead for a dependency in the converse direction: that much and perhaps even all metonymy is rooted – if sometimes slightly indirectly – in broadly reflexive relationships, though not usually in a hyperbolic way.