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because it's not America as whole who got together to do it, it's a couple people who live in the country who do it. At least that's how I see it. "America rej
by rtpg 12y ago
because it's not America as whole who got together to do it, it's a couple people who live in the country who do it. At least that's how I see it.
"America rejects Bush, elects Clinton" makes sense because it's talking about something the country as a whole did. But saying "America builds the creationist museum" can be read as "this was built with a non-minimal amount of popular support, is representative of how americans see things as a whole, and should be placed on the index card describing the country and its people"
- jacquesm 12y agoEvery news-item in every newspaper published starts off with 'City,' for national news and 'City, Country' for international news. That's so customary I highly doubt readers would interpret it as the whole country being complicit, it's just a geographic label, not a stand-in for the population.
- logfromblammo 12y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synecdoche http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synecdoche http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metonymy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metonymy This sort of construct is well-established in English. When the headline reads "America Walks on Moon", the metonymic expansion is understood to be "[at least one person from] America Walks on Moon". In this case, I need no additional context to interpret the headline as the hotel being built somewhere within the geographical region called Japan.