Metonymic Meaning Expansion (MME)

Most frameworks for generating new ideas work by importing structure from elsewhere — finding a metaphor, drawing an analogy, mapping one domain onto another. Metonymic Meaning Expansion (MME) works differently. It proposes that sufficient meaning is already present within any domain, if you know how to interrogate it. New insights emerge not from leaping to another conceptual territory, but from attending carefully to what is already there: proximities, adjacencies, part-whole relations, and the structuring force of what is no longer present but still active.

What is MME 

Metonymic Meaning Expansion (MME) is a systematic, practice-based framework for meaning-making that theorises metonymy as a dynamic, domain-internal process of meaning expansion. Operating through the interrogation of proximal relations within a single domain or domain matrix — spatial co-presence, part-whole dynamics, presence-absence relations, and material adjacencies — MME generates new meaning and insight directly from what is present, known, or materially experienced, without recourse to the cross-domain conceptual mappings characteristic of metaphor. Developed initially within arts-based and embodied research methodologies, and distinct from purely linguistic theories of metonymy, the framework shows emerging applicability across a range of disciplines, including psychotherapy and other fields where meaning arises from situated, relational, and experiential encounter.

 

MME and metaphor: a key distinction

Metaphor generates insight by mapping structure from a source domain onto a target domain — "time is money" imports an economic framework into our understanding of temporal experience. This is generative, but it also constrains: what the metaphor highlights, it simultaneously conceals.

Metonymy operates differently — domain-internally, through proximity and adjacency rather than cross-domain transfer. MME makes this process systematic and sustained. As cognitive linguists have argued, there is in fact no metaphor without metonymy: every property mapped from source to target must first have been metonymically related to that source (Barcelona, 2003). MME makes these foundational relations explicit, and proposes them as a primary — not merely preparatory — mode of inquiry.

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
• Displaying series or sets of things or information together to make differences visible
• Analysing variations within a particular conceptual category

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 (almost) 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

MME integrates productively with several strands of contemporary research. Its emphasis on embodied, situated knowledge aligns with Sara Ahmed's feminist phenomenology and its insistence that where we stand shapes what we can see. Its recognition of material agency — the way substances, objects, and environments actively participate in meaning-making — connects with the new materialist accounts of Karen Barad and Jane Bennett. Its relational, proximity-based methodology resonates with Karen Barad's diffractive approach, which reads elements through each other rather than comparing them from a fixed external position.

More recently, the framework has shown potential connections with extended and distributed cognition accounts — particularly the question of how cognitive processes are shaped by, and distributed across, bodies, environments, and material culture. MME's domain-internal methodology offers a complementary tool for interrogating the conceptual frames through which such processes are typically described.

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

MME can be tested as an analytical or generative tool using AI. A guide to doing so is available via the link below. Findings shared via the Padlet contribute to ongoing research into the framework's cross-disciplinary applicability.

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

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