University of Birmingham's Dr Caroline Tagg, who achieved fleeting notoriety a few years ago for her so-called "PhD in texting", talked about her study of the communication medium at the British University in Dubai today. As a sometimes student of linguistics, I enjoyed a few parts of the talk, such as the breakdown of the types of metonymies (e.g. substitution of effect for cause) and their relative popularity, and the effects of register on the use of metonymy. The study was comprised of just SMS texts, though; it would be interesting to see how metonymy is used in more current messaging media. I would also like to have seen a comparison between how metonymy is used in messaging compared to how it is used in phone or face-to-face conversation.
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