Metonymy is one of the basic characteristics of cognition. It is extremely common for people to take one well-understood or easy-to-perceive aspect of something and use it to stand either for the thing as a whole or for some other aspect or part of it.[...] One needs to distinguish which principles work for which languages. Such principles take the following form: given an ICM with some background condition [...], there is a “stands for” relation that may hold between two elements A and B, such that one element of the ICM, B, may stand for another element A. [...] We will refer to such ICMs containing stands-for relations metonymic models.
- Lakoff (1987), Pag. 77

Metonymy: Given category B, where A is either a member or subcategory of B, suppose that A metonymically “stands for” B. That is, it is either a social stereotype, or a typical case, or an ideal, or a sub-model etc. Then, A will be a best example of B.
- Lakoff (1987), Pag. 288

The metonymy in which a TYPICAL CASE stands for the WHOLE CATEGORY characterizes the effects of variable binding. In this metonymy, a representative member of a category stands for the members of the category as a whole.
- Lakoff (1987), Pag. 366