Metonymic Thinking

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It might be sort of a tedious read, but for those who may be interested, this book at Google Books examines what I find to be an interesting commonality among some persons with autistic experiences (specifically Herman Melville, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Ernest Hemingway), namely METYNOMIC THINKING, which is defined at Wikipedia as a way of thinking "in which a thing or concept is called not by its own name but rather by the name of something associated in meaning with that thing or concept." Among other things, understanding something about this way of thinking might help clarify why many autistic people like to refer to people or things by non-typical terms. Here's the link: http://bit.ly/2aKDXH6

I think this might have a lot to do with some frustration I experience when I try to talk with my NT friend - I frequently use terms that are not exactly the same words most people use for things, but I enjoy the variety and flavors of the words, playing with language like a baby plays with food. But my friend "corrects" me, and that irritates me. Like she is unable to deal with abstractions like I can, so she feels that if I call, for instance, the thing a harness racing horse pulls a "trailer," she might feel she has to correct me and say "That's called a sulky."

I feel resentful when I'm corrected about things like that. Maybe I just need to be more generous and understand that the poor things (NTs) just don't know any better.



That same link has a section that talks about Melville's excruciatingly complete, exhaustively detailed descriptions and explanations... something those who live with spectrum-dwellers might recognize as what's sometimes called "Little Professor Syndrome."

I don't know about the others, but I'd have a hard time seeing Melville as autistic in any way. It is known, however, that he came from a strongly bipolar family (like many creative writers), and sometimes his writing style does reflect the kind of "word flood" that appears in hypomania.

I don't really experience this, but sometimes it feels like I feel weird about using people's given names. I certainly don't go around calling people "unit two", but sometimes me and my friends will come up with quirky nicknames and stuff.

An above-average level of verbosity and probably an implied high verbal IQ is often seen in the community.

Metonymic thinking makes sense when you look at it as how words and concepts are processed. Especially in English, using metonyms allows the use of a much broader transmission of concepts than using the underlying noun. Referring to something as "Silicon Valley" instead of "The High Tech Industry of Northern California" or "FANGs", is a convention to discuss different things. Referring to it as the "High Tech Industry of Northern California" or something to that effect would suggest that you're discussing all high tech firms in that area, and leaving out firms in Washington State, while the "FANG" term means you're referring only to those 4 firms.

Many languages have more nouns to refer to things, depending on social status and cultural affinity.

I find that I don't like calling people by any other name than the one used when I was introduced. Which means that I rarely use nicknames, unless the person introduces me with a nickname, then I find it really weird to use their real name.

Thinking about it though, I do tend to avoid using somebody's name in conversation at all unless I know them well. I don't know why.

Making up nicknames for people, and even things, seems like a very NT thing to do. And being picayune about proper names seems very autistic to me.

Though I am bad at greeting folks by their names. Folks will say "hi myname" and I responde "hi! "and nod, but it takes me a second to even retrieve their name form my mind, and the moment passes.

Wow. I didn't know anyone else did that with names. I have given alternative names to people (and pets) for as long as I can remember.
I only use them with people I'm in familiar relationships with (parents, sibling, wife, friends, etc) and I knock it off if they make it patently clear that they aren't OK with it. Of course there have been plenty of times when I didn't pick up on the "it's not OK" vibe and someone has gotten angry. If nothing else, I frequently call people by their last names. I wonder why some of us do this.

i don't know if the name thing has that much to do with asperger's per se. i'm often uncomfortable with names (including or especially my own), but friends i've met online over the years typically have the same thing. they don't like to address others by their real names, and they don't like to be addressed or even remembered by their real names either. afaik they're not all "in the spectrum". it's something else that we have in common

"what's in a name?"... the rhetorical question may imply that the answer is "nothing", but that's clearly not true

my guess is it has to do with compartmentalization. your real name is generally attached to your identity in the context of your family of origin

Yet another thing I do that I wasn't aware is an autism related trait.
I rarely use names, either just avoiding them altogether, or preferring to use descriptors (eg - "my neighbour" or "my sister" instead of using their names) and have a tendency to slightly alter even simple titles (like mother) slightly left field. I also get caught out for referring to people as "it" rather than "you," and "animals" rather than "people" when referring to people.
People have often told me I talk strangely in terms of word choice, not just because of the speech disorder. Maybe this is why.