Metonymic Meaning Expansion (MME)

What is MME 

Metonymic Meaning Expansion (MME) is a systematic framework for generating meaning, expanding ideas, and conducting rigorous research through domain-internal interrogation of overlooked proximities.

Unlike metaphors which maps concepts across separate domains‚ MME operates within unified or single domains or frames of meaning. Meaning emerges directly from interrogating what's actually present: spatial relationships, material adjacencies, temporal continuities, structural connections, and overlooked elements that are marginal or peripheral.

MME provides a structured methodology without compromising creative integrity, making it valuable for:

• Arts-based researchers seeking systematic frameworks
• Creative practitioners developing ideas
• Educators teaching creative and critical thinking
• Researchers working with embodied, site-specific, or material practices
• Anyone interested in transdisciplinary approaches to knowledge generation

The Four Proximity Relations 

MME structures inquiry through four proximity relations: concrete questions that reveal overlooked meanings:

1. Spatial Co-Presence
Same-category elements in close proximity enabling comparison that reveals subtle differences

When multiple instances of the same type of thing are placed or experienced together, their variations become foregrounded. This typological approach - familiar from museum displays and biological experiments - surfaces diversity within categories we habitually treat as uniform.

Example Applications:

• Comparing multiple versions of creative work to identify subtle variations
• Mapping microclimates across a landscape to reveal atmospheric diversity
• Displaying series or sets to make differences visible
• Analysing variations within conceptual categories

Key Question: What subtle differences exist between instances of the same category when experienced together?



2. Part-Whole Dynamics
How individual elements relate to and constitute larger systems

Individual instances (parts) only become meaningful through their relationship to larger wholes they constitute or participate in. This relation explores how fragments accumulate into patterns, how personal experience connects to collective knowledge, how local phenomena reveal system-scale behaviour.

Example Applications:

• Individual creative gestures contributing to complete artwork
• Personal testimonies constituting collective oral history
• Single data points participating in larger datasets
• Daily practices building into long-term transformation

Key Question: How does this individual instance relate to the larger system it belongs to or helps constitute?



3. Presence-Absence Dynamics
How what is no longer physically present continues to shape current conditions

Historical traces, erased elements, or absent forces remain materially active in present circumstances. This relation interrogates how absence persists through material influence, how the past shapes present embodied experience, how what's forgotten or marginalised continues affecting what's visible.

Example Applications:

• Colonial architecture structuring contemporary urban movement patterns
• Extinct species' ecological roles affecting present ecosystems
• Demolished buildings determining current drainage patterns
• Erased labour (domestic work, care work) structuring present social relations
• Historical landscape design shaping contemporary atmospheric conditions

Key Question: What is no longer physically here, yet continues to structure or influence present conditions?



4. Material Adjacency
How different materials or forces transform each other through direct physical contact

Different types of materials, substances, or forces that touch or are exposed to each other undergo mutual transformation over time. This relation recognises material agency - brass oxidising through atmospheric contact, paint ageing on canvas through light exposure, bodies warming air through breath and proximity.

Example Applications:

• Rust forming where iron meets moisture and oxygen
• Ink bleeding into paper fibres
• Stone eroding through water contact
• Materials weathering through environmental exposure
• Body and environment transforming each other through sustained contact

Key Question: What different materials/forces touch each other, and how do they transform through this contact?

Why MME Matters

For Arts-Based Research

MME addresses a persistent challenge in arts-based research: articulating how creative practice generates systematic knowledge beyond personal insight. The four proximity relations provide structured, replicable methodology while preserving creative openness.

Unlike frameworks requiring culturally-specific symbolic knowledge (such as Jungian archetypes or religious symbolism), MME grounds inquiry in shared embodied experience within accessible domains. This makes it particularly valuable for transdisciplinary and cross-cultural research.

For Creative Practice

MME offers practical tools for expanding ideas and generating unexpected connections. By systematically interrogating spatial co-presence, part-whole relations, presence-absence dynamics, and material adjacencies, practitioners can reveal overlooked elements that conventional thinking backgrounds or ignores.

The framework validates embodied, sensory, material knowledge - recognising that walking, making, touching, sensing are legitimate ways of knowing, not secondary to abstract analysis.

For Educators

MME provides a teachable structure for creative and critical thinking. The four proximity questions can be applied across disciplines where creative thought and critical analysis is valued:

• Literature: interrogating textual proximities
• Science: exploring system-scale phenomena through local observations
• History: surfacing presence-absence dynamics
• Art/Design: examining material adjacencies and spatial co-presence
• Social research: recognising part-whole relations in communities

For Researchers Across Disciplines

MME integrates productively with contemporary theoretical frameworks:

Feminist Phenomenology (Sara Ahmed): validates embodied, situated knowledge; centres lived experience

New Materialism (Karen Barad, Jane Bennett): recognises material and non-human agency; refuses separation of matter and meaning

Diffractive Methodology (Karen Barad): reads elements through each other to generate new patterns; relational meaning-making

Together, these approaches support MME as systematic methodology grounded in embodied engagement, more-than-human participation, and relational meaning-making.



How MME Works: Domain-Internal vs. Cross-Domain

Metaphor operates through cross-domain mapping:

• Source domain - Target domain
• Example: "Time IS money" (economic concepts - temporal understanding)
• Generates insight through comparison across separate domains

Metonymy (MME) operates domain-internally:

• Interrogates relations within a single domain or domain matrix
• Example: Comparing multiple microclimates within one landscape surfaces atmospheric diversity
• Generates meaning through proximity interrogation

Key insight: "There is no metaphor without metonymy" (Barcelona, 2003; Forceville & Urios-Aparisi, 2009). Metaphorical mapping requires prior metonymic relations. Every property mapped from source to target must first have been metonymically related to that source. MME makes these foundational relations explicit, systematic and sustained.



Origins and Development

MME emerged from my PhD research *Resisting Metaphors: A Metonymic Approach to the Study of Creativity and Cognition* (2011), which challenged metaphor's dominance in creativity research and advanced metonymy as "domain-internal meaning expansion" for artistic sense-making.

Drawing on cognitive linguistics, art philosophy, and complexity theory, the research examined how metonymy functions in material processes and draws meaning from proximal contexts. This provided the first systematic framework for non-verbal metonymic creative thought from an art practice perspective.

Since 2011, MME has been applied across:

• Site-specific installations (*Taking the Air*, Gatton Park 2017)
• Embodied research methodologies
• Ideas generation workshops and courses
• Transdisciplinary research projects
• Arts-based research frameworks
• Creative pedagogy

Applications and Case Studies

Current Applications:

Taking the Air (2017): Six-month embodied atmospheric research using Beaufort Scale measurements across Capability Brown's 18th-century landscape. Demonstrated all four proximity relations operating within ecological domain. [Link to project page]

Ideas Generation: Online courses and in-person workshops utilising the MME framework for expanding creative and critical thinking across disciplines.

Research Methodology: Framework for validating embodied, sensory, material research as rigorous knowledge generation.

Case Study Collection: Currently seeking collaborators for MME book showcasing diverse applications across practices. [Contact for more information (contact page)]

Use this link to get a guide to testing MME with AI

https://padlet.com/susanryland/metonymic-meaning-expansion-ai-test-bzv0w8sckohv3780/wish/1xkVaqGVA5oRZl0e