From a 1967 internal report (released 1978) by the Inspector General of the CIA (and you should see his uniform!):
. . . There is a third point, which was not directly made by any of those we interviewed, but which emerges clearly from the interviews and from reviews of files. The point is that of frequent recourse to synecdoche – the mention of a part when the whole is to be understood, or vice-versa. Thus we encounter repeated references to phrases such as “disposing of Castro,” which may be read in the literal sense of assassinating him, when it is intended that it be read in the broader, figurative sense of dislodging the Castro regime. Reversing the coin, we find people speaking vaguely of “doing something about Castro” when it is clear that what they have specifically in mind is killing him. In a situation wherein those speaking may not have actually meant what they seemed to say or may not have said what they actually meant, they should not be surprised if their oral shorthand is interpreted differently than was intended.
_ quoted in Joan Didion, Miami, 1987
Ah, the advantages of a liberal education. It would be embarrassing to compare even this rather cumbersome example of the Inspector General’s prose with any of the recently-released ASIO transcripts.
In context (readers of Didion might agree) hr quotation of this passage reads like a rhetorical ploy-within-a-ploy. Precisely this kind of analysis, although considerably more subtle, is what she delivers in Miami, as in all her non-fiction from Salvador onwards. And like the Inspector-General, she pays the price of a certain laboriousness. In a world of crazy language, however, spelling it out may constitute a virtue.
That said, there is the question of Didion’s own copious use of synecdoche . . .