The extract called “Metaphor and Metonymy” is taken from Lodge’s Nice Work and it reports a conversation between the two main characters Robyn and Vic taking place during a drive.

While driving along the road they saw some poster advertising a brand of famous cigarettes and they began to discuss on the meaning of that picture. The narrator reports all their words but the conversation is only a pretext. In fact the writer wants to draw the attention of the intelligent reader: he reflects on the way language works focusing his attention on the figures of speech, in particular metaphor and metonymy.

It comes out that the language of advertising is based on persuasion and it appeals to unconscious association (as the slit in the silk reminds to a vagina, etc). So the reader can reflects on the working of advertising: language is juxtaposes to pictures and it frequently adopts the devices of literary language to reach the possible buyer’s mind.

Finally, the narrator shows the working of metaphor and metonymy, rhetorical figures which have additional meanings, through the conversation: metaphor gives a judgment and metonymy creates relations among objects or persons. At the same time, the concept of Derrida’s difference is exemplified by Vic’s answer to Robyn.

The narrative technique adopted is the third person omniscient narrator that introduce direct speeches so the narrator adopts a showing technique.

In conclusion, you understand that language is a ever-moving system, never stable where meanings are always different.