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?
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.
ahh that makes sense
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.
It’s a type of figure of speech, called a metonym.
It’s Synecdoche, a figure of speech where a part of something is used to refer to the whole.
South Africa has three capitals but they have different roles: Pretoria is the executive/administrative capital, and this branch of the government is run by the head of state. The other roles are the legislative (Cape Town) and judicial (Bloemfontein) capitals. I would assume depending on which branch of the government is delivering news they would use the appropriate capital, but it’s most likely to be Pretoria.
Feel free to correct me I am not an expert or South African.
Sources: Wiki Executive power
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?
who knows
