For example, “Washington” (US), “Brussels” (EU), “Moscow” (Russia).
I guess it’s a short hand for writing “US government”, “Russian government”, etc. but why? And what happens when you’re referring to a country with multiple capitals like South Africa?
It’s Synecdoche, a figure of speech where a part of something is used to refer to the whole.
We do that in Arabic too. It’s called “badal”, a figure of speech where you replace “the whole” with “the part” to emphasize that part’s importance in the context; in this case that would be either where the government is located in the country or where the report originated from.
For example when Arabic news agencies want to refer to the USA’s government they say Washington or the white house. Since that’s usually where the news come from.
As mentioned using a metonym makes the article more engaging by avoiding repetition. But I want to point out that it is often not the Capital per se that is being referenced but the city parliament is seated in.
For instance, the Netherlands’ parliament is based out of The Hague, so it would be odd to reference to Amsterdam (the capital) when referencing it’s government as there is no clear link with that city. Similarly, you don’t often see London referenced in this regard, more likely Westminster, an area within London.
Yes, it’s metonymy, as people have said. You also get it in similar contexts where people will name a building such as ‘the White House’ or ‘[10] Downing Street’ to refer to the governments of the US or the UK.
It’s a type of figure of speech, called a metonym.
In general, I have seen mentioning the country after a city name quite often in American publications, and not only with capitals. Maybe this is because of the famous geographical knowledge of Americans?
The US has a huge number of cities named after cities/regions in other parts of the world, e.g.:
- Moscow, Idaho
- Ottawa, Illinois
- Brussels, Wisconsin
- Ontario, California
- Paris, Texas
- etc!
Adding the country or state designation after one of these names is helpful for clarity.
Side note, Paris, Texas is a pretty great movie.
Seconded, brilliant film.
