ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -The main difference between metaphor and metonymy, according to Lacan, is that metaphor functions to suppress, while metonymy functions to combine. He writes: “it is in the word-to-word connection that metonymy is based, ” and then: “one word for another: that is the formula of metaphor.”

Detailed explanation-2: -For Lacan, then, metaphor is essentially a process of condensation, the production of meaning in a discrete instance, whereas metonymy is essentially one of displacement, the process whereby meaning is always deferred or displaced within a signifying chain.

Detailed explanation-3: -Metonymy thus concerns the ways in which signifiers can be combined / linked in a single signifying chain ("horizontal” relations), whereas metaphor concerns the ways in which a signifier in one signifying chain may be substituted for a signifier in another chain ("vertical” relations).

Detailed explanation-4: -Lacan presented a reworking of Freudian principles with the focus on the human subject, its place in society and its relationship to language. Thus, language, the most vital of the elements of human civilization, has been drawn as a model to study the development of a human subject.