Tropes and Schemes (Figures of Speech and Thought)
When attending to the synthetic, figural register in what we read, we cease to look through, and begin to look at the ways in which words and sentences create and play with meaning. Words and sentences matter; they act, and they either do so in an expected, customary way, or they turn away from the customary in unexpected ways.
As Jane Gallop (2000) has argued, most of us have been trained to treat language transparently, as if words and sentences don't matter, only the ideas within the thematic domain matter, which words and sentences merely point to. We should not discount reading for the mimetic and thematic registers, but in order to grow as readers, to read as writers read, at some point we must seriously explore the synthetic, figural register, especially to the degree that doing so turns us away from the expected and toward the surprising. |
We see that here, between the letter and the meaning, between what the poet has written and what he thought, there is a gap, a space, and like all space, it possesses a form. This form is called a figure, and there will be as many figures as one can find forms in the space that is created on each occasion between the line of the signifier ("la tristesse s'envole" --sorrow flies away) and that of the signified ("le chagrin ne dure pas" --sadness does not last), which is obviously merely another signifier offered as the literal one. |
Tropes and figures of speech and thought do not easily submit to categorization, but they all perform in some way that diverges from everyday usage. While tropes deal with semantics, schemes deal with syntax, and figures of thought deal with speaker/audience interaction.
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Reading for rhetorical tropes
Tropes “turn away” from common usage and meaning, principally through taking a word from one domain within which it belongs, and carrying over into another domain within which it does not originate. The four master tropes are: Metaphor, where a word is transferred, carried over, from its proper meaning to another, by creating a similarity between two dissimilar things: “Procrastination is dancing after the song has ended.” Metonymy, where the effect stands in for the cause, or vice versa, or a thing stands in for an associated, contiguous thing: “Rowan is proud of its status in the list of schools that give its students the greatest degree of social mobility.” Synecdoche, where a part of a whole stands for the whole, or the whole stands for the part: “I have spilled too much ink on Nietzsche’s essay ‘On Truth and Lying in a Nonmoral Sense.’” Irony, where the writer enacts an inversion or reversal of expectations, which requires two audiences: an authorial audience who sides with the author, who sees and gets the irony, and a narrative audience who only sees the narrator, and who misses the irony: “I adore those neighbors who throw parties late into the week nights, and I especially love those who let loose partygoers who then storm the streets hurling slurred speeches out loud and into the ears of those trying to sleep.”
Here are a few other important tropes to look out for and practice in your writing:
Anthimeria: substituting one part of speech for another: “Friend me!” Antonomasia: using a descriptive phrase instead of a proper noun Hyperbole: overstatement Litotes: understatement: “I am not unmoved when the vulnerable suffer” Paranomasia: punning Periphrasis: replacing a single word with a string of words Onomatopoeia: the sound of the word imitates what it names Tmesis: a word broken up into pieces: “fan-freaking-tastic” |
In his book Studies in the Way of Words, Paul Grice provides a set of maxims that comprise our everyday expectations concerning communication. When someone "flouts" any of these maxims, something rhetorical is at work, namely, the trope called irony.
Quantity: Quoted in Rhetorical Narratology by Michael S. Kearns (18)
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Reading for rhetorical figures: Schemes
Schemes of balance:
Parallelism: the presentation of two or more ideas of equal importance using a similar grammatical structure Isocolon: grammatically parallel presentation of two ideas of equal length Antithesis: contrasting words or phrases placed side by side in parallel structure Chiasmus: Grammatical structure repeated in inverted order in second half of a sentence, where the first half has two parts Schemes of emphasis: Zeugma (as ellipses): using a single noun or verb with several verbs or nouns Asyndeton: succession of phrases or clauses without connective conjunctions Polysyndeton: succession of phrases or clauses connected with conjunctions Anastrophe: inverted word order. “Let’s speak of all things literary” Schemes of repetition and restatement: Anaphora: First word of successive clauses or sentences repeated Epistrophe: Last word of successive clauses or sentences repeated Symploche: First and last words of a clause or sentence repeated Anadiplosis: word that ends clause/sentence begins next Conduplicatio: beginning a clause/sentence with key word from previous Antimetabole: Two terms of the first half of a sentence are repeated in the last half in inverted order: AB:BA Parentheses: Word, phrase, or clause inserted as an aside in the middle of a sentence Ploche: repetition of same word with different senses Polyptoton: repetition of different forms of same word: “Your inventory is made up of all the things you have already invented” Climax: presentation of ideas in increasing order of importance Schemes of transition: Metabasis: transitionary summary that recaps what came before and hints at what is to come Procatalepsis: heading off objections in advance Analepsis: flashback Metalepsis: attributing present effect to a distant cause (“the butterfly effect”) |
Reading for rhetorical figures of thought (speech act)
Aporia: an anomaly
Apostrophe: addressing a person or object not present Erotema: rhetorical question Hypophora: asking and answering questions Interpellatio: calling or hailing the audience to take up a specific role in relation to the speaker Licentia: speaking truth to power Obsecractio: the pleading request Partitio: separating out members of the audience Subiectio: a mock dialogue |
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