In his essay Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Aphasia Disturbances, Roman Jakobson argues that language has a bipolar structure, shifting between the poles of metaphor and metonymy.
Some people have a condition called ‘selection deficiency’ or ‘similarity disorder,’ where they struggle to pick the right words and rely heavily on the context of the conversation. Jakobson explains that metaphor is about selection and similarity, while metonymy is about contiguity, combination, and context. Aphasia, a disorder that affects communication, can mainly be divided into two types: one that affects word selection and substitution (metaphoric) and one that affects word combination and organization (metonymic). Jakobson says that conversations happen through similarity or contiguity. In normal conversations, both methods work together, but factors like culture can cause people to prefer one over the other. In a psychological experiment, children are given a word and asked to say the first word that comes to mind. Their answers show two patterns: they either substitute the noun with a similar word or add a word to form a complete sentence. For example, when hearing the word “hut,” some children might say “poor little house,” which is a predicative response (creating a sentence connected to the original word). Others might replace “hut” with a similar word like “cabin” or “hovel,” showing how words can be interchangeable based on similarity or contrast in meaning.
Jakobson also discusses metonymic responses to the word “hut,” like “thatch,” “litter,” or “poverty,” which are closely connected to the idea of a hut. The way people combine these elements—similarity (metaphor) and contiguity (metonymy)—in their speech reflects their personal style. This is especially important in verbal art like poetry or oral stories. Metaphors are common in literary styles like Romanticism and Symbolism, while metonymy is often used in Realism. Realist authors focus on how things are related in time and space, using specific details to represent larger ideas. For example, in Anna Karenina, Tolstoy emphasizes the main character’s handbag during her suicide. In War and Peace, he mentions small details like “hair on the upper lip” and “bare shoulder” to represent female characters. In painting, Cubism uses metonymy by breaking objects into smaller parts that represent the whole. On the other hand, Surrealist painters tend to use metaphor. In films, directors can change angles, perspectives, and focuses to create metonymic close-ups. Filmmakers like Charlie Chaplin and Eisenstein blended these techniques with metaphor, such as through montage.
Language has two main parts: metaphor and metonymy. People with aphasia may focus on just one part and ignore the other. To explain this, the writer gives an example of a Russian folk tale using parallelism as a comedic device: “Thomas is a bachelor,” and “Jeremiah is unmarried.” Both statements describe two different men in the same story. Then, he talks about a common wedding song: “Gleb is a bachelor, Ivanovic is unmarried.” While these lines seem similar, they split the same person, Gleb, into two different identities. The Russian novelist Gleb Ivanovic Uspensky, who later had a speech disorder, was affected by this idea. In polite conversation, people usually use both his first name and patronymic (“Gleb Ivanovic”), but for Uspensky, they represented two separate identities: “Gleb” symbolized his good qualities, and “Ivanovic,” which links him to his father, represented his bad traits. This shows Uspensky had a “similarity disorder,” as he preferred metonymy. His writing, filled with details, often confused readers.
Metaphor is easier for researchers to understand, so they tend to focus more on it. On the other hand, metonymy, which relies on different principles, can be more challenging to interpret. While there is a lot of research on metaphor, metonymy has received less attention. Poetry heavily relies on similarity, such as parallel sounds and rhythms in rhymes, which makes it easier to study metaphor. Prose, however, depends more on contiguity, meaning the connection between things in time and space. So, poetry is metaphorical, while prose is more metonymic.