< previous page page_81 next page >

Page 81
among the others (or the only one allowed by the context), which possesses it as a semantic component.'' The correction between parentheses should serve in such cases as 'i veloci legni' (the swift woods); without a doubt, 'di legno' (of wood) enters into the semantic spectrum of many lexemes, but, in a naval context, it is obvious that the lexeme in question is /nave/ (ship).
The extreme traversability of the chains we have called 'metonymic' (and it would be better to say 'of contiguity in the code')chains that allow metaphoric substitutions with leaps which are apparent ones, but which in fact are short circuits of a preestablished pathresults from the fact that these chains are already entirely constituted inside the code and do not refer to connections attained in the referents. We can then establish that every metonymic connection refers to one of these three types of contiguity:
f0d057874ee5e31d4706f7033c0ae11d.gif f0d057874ee5e31d4706f7033c0ae11d.gif
contiguity in the code: the most common type, it corresponds to some of the examples given in the preceding pages, such as /crown/, /white-collar/, and so on;
f0d057874ee5e31d4706f7033c0ae11d.gif f0d057874ee5e31d4706f7033c0ae11d.gif
contiguity in the co-text: an example could be as follows: "out of the getaway car came some pistol shots; that car had to be silenced" (where the car is substituted for the pistol, and vice versa);
f0d057874ee5e31d4706f7033c0ae11d.gif f0d057874ee5e31d4706f7033c0ae11d.gif
contiguity in the referent: according to what has already been said, this genre of contiguity should be practically nonexistent. However, since there are some special cases, let us see if it is a question of contiguity through the referent or contiguity through the signified (and thus it can revert back to the two preceding cases of contiguity in the code or contiguity in the co-text).
Let us examine the case of a particular type of lapsus, also studied by psychoanalysis, which is born not out of the comparison of two words but, rather, out of the comparison of two given facts of experience. That is to say, in a situation of lapsus, I can say 'ho colto il morto' (I have picked up the dead body) in the place of 'ho colto il mirto' (I have picked up the myrtle), because I know that a corpse is buried under the myrtle bush (or because I remember a corpse buried under another bush). In this case the contiguity, which would appear to be linguistic, cannot be explained without recourse to the referent. In the same way, one cannot explain the fact that in seeing a dagger an individual has erotic fantasies, unless one knows for certain that he saw his own mother kill her lover with a dagger during intercourse.
This type of contiguityimposed by some sort of violence done to the coderemains so inexplicable that the need emerges for an 'interpretation' of dreams, until, once the dream is explained, the contiguity is institutionalized and becomes part of the culture. In this sense the her-

 
< previous page page_81 next page >