The ‘Wall Street/Main Street’ Bug: Curing Symptoms of Synecdoche

Everyone uses synecdoche, even if no student can tell you what it is.

We say “Washington,” for instance, to loosely refer to the U.S. government and expect everyone to understand. No one parses the gaps between those supposedly comprised by the image (e.g., every executive-branch official who works in Washington, with the possible exception of Dick Cheney), and those perhaps falsely implicated (other U.S. government officials, such as members of Congress who oppose the president’s policies). Read more