What are metonyms? What are anaphoric references? And (why) do they matter in fantasy writing?

❓ Do you know your metonyms from your anaphoric references?

This week, some terminology that was relevant when I was teaching A level English language has popped into my head. It doesn’t really matter what these things are called, but what does matter is that these things are *things.

One term was metonymy.

The other was anaphoric reference.

In case these concepts are new to you…

Metonymy is when you have something that’s part of something being used as a stand-in term for the whole. Like when you describe workers as ‘hands’. Or when ‘the bench’ is used to mean judges. So, ‘hands’ and ‘the bench’ are both metonyms. (Occasionally, writers of fantasy fiction will come up with their own metonyms and often they’ll wonder whether to capitalise them. For instance, the Swords/the swords could be used as a stand-in for an army.)

An anaphoric reference is a reference that links back to something that comes before it in a text. In this case it was ‘the man’, and the issue I came up against was that the last man mentioned in the manuscript wasn’t actually the man that ‘the man’ was supposed to be referring to… (If you see what I mean.)

As I said, the terms don’t actually matter. (Not unless you’re using them in an academic context.)

What matters to me at this point is that anaphoric references are used accurately and metonyms are styled consistently, if and when they are used.

So now you know.