Metonymy and Indexicality: People and Place in the Five Points

Abstract

This article explores how the perceived identity of a population may be rhetorically constructed by a discursive relationship between a place and the people that live there. This relationship is constructed through the use of metonymy and the establishment of an indexical connection between people and place. People become synonymous with place and vice versa so that reference to one is also a reference to the other. The article illustrates this relationship by examining depictions of New York City's Five Points neighborhood during the nineteenth century, particularly Riis's How the Other Half Lives and Asbury's The Gangs of New York.

Notes

1I thank RR's peer reviewers Barbara Johnstone and John Hammerback for their helpful suggestions for revision.