Wherever we have culture, we have ethnicity. In this essay we explore what I advance as an important aspect of expression of ethnicity, that is complex implementation of device of metonymic metaphors. I see ethnicity as based on a Peircean opposition of we:other. To extent that all cultural groups perceive and act upon this opposition, all cultures are viewed here as potentially ethnic cultures. While ethnic units within larger societies are easy to detect, even most isolated tribe is not so sequestered as to be unaware of the other Accordingly, there follows construction of what I have called ethnic culture texts-verbal and nonverbal-which, by means of this opposition, act as commentaries on ethnic culture (We are different from them in certain respects). Thus ethnic texts function as metaethnic texts. I have also noted that ethnic texts are structured similarly to artistic texts, aesthetic function being present whether or not it is dominant (cf. Portis Winner 1976, 1979). Thus I suggest that metaethnic function and aesthetic function are interdependent attributes characterizing ethnic texts, and that a typical device which interlocks these two functions is that of verbal and non-verbal metonymic metaphors. The exploration of this device in ethnic texts departs from conceptions concerning aesthetic structures advanced by lakobson (1960) and Lotman (1976), but my emphasis is on dual function, not only aesthetic but also metatextual, of metonymicmetaphoric constructions. In this discussion we first consider metonymic metaphors within our conceptual framework, and then tum to some applications. Examples are drawn from a modem ethnic culture, that of Slovenes in Cleveland.