TROPES AND SCHEMES

1. TROPES AND SCHEMES (In)Conspicuous Style

2. Tropes • Shifts in meaning from the ordinary use of words • Types include the following: • Metaphor and simile • Synecdoche • Personification • Syllepsis • Anthimeria • Hyperbole & litotes (understatement)

3. Schemes • Unusual arrangements of words • Can be categorized as follows: • Schemes of balance • Schemes of omission • Schemes of unusual word order • Schemes of repetition

4. Schemes of balance Parallelism: All epochs have employed euphemism both to downplay and to camouflage. (Murphy) • Antithesis: While their colleagues look up, the neutrino astronomers look down. (Fink & Fink) • LA is a great place to drive in and drive away from. (Fink & Fink) • What is written without effort is generally read without pleasure. • Isocolon: the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. (MLK cited in Hale)

5. Schemes of omission • Ellipsis: I don’t believe [that] the kind of achievement [that] American Idol celebrates is as fulfilling as [the kind of achievement that] comes from years of hard work and truly good musicianship. • Asyndeton: I came, I saw, I conquered. • Putting keys where you can find them, picking up wet towels, not using the stove to store old newspapers—these are all good things. (Gilmor)

6. Note: Polysyndeton • An abundance of conjunctions (“and,” “or”) • Your eyes glaze and wander and find, with chilling accuracy, the least interesting stain on your office wall. (Fink & Fink)

7. Schemes of unusual word order • Anastrophe: Such a time there certainly was, though. (Krotz) • Parenthesis • Hyperbaton: Yet I’ll not shed her blood,/ Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow.

8. Familiar schemes of repetition • Alliteration • Assonance & consonance • Rhyme (internal or end-rhyme) • Chiasmus: “It represents … what you’ve been doing with your work life, and what your work life has been doing to you.” (Fink & Fink)

9. Some new ones • Polyptoton: Poverty and isolation produce impoverished and isolated minds. • Anaphora: Now is the time… I have a dream (Martin Luther King Jr.) • Epistrophe: When I was a child, I spake as a child; I understood as a child; I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

10. More new ones • Anadiplosis: You want to be very careful about lying; otherwise, you are nearly sure to get caught. Once caught, you can never again be. . .what you were before. (Twain) • Tricolon: Traditionally, invaders are silent and invisible, hiding behind walls, scuttling under furnaces, lurking in attics and basements. (Gilmor)

11. Watch out for arrangement of items: • (from Woody Allen) • He (contemporary man) has seen the ravages of war, he has known natural catastrophes, he has been to singles bars. • Deliberate = source of humour • Accidental = problems of tone & meaning

12. A penny saved is a penny earned. One who is frugal with one’s income discovers that saving the money one earns is as good a means of increasing income as earning more money. Making passages memorable

13. Compare these pairs: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. As times go, it seemed okay. But I knew there were serious problems. These are times that try men’s souls. Soul-wise, these times are tough! (thanks to Strunk & White)

14. Make more conspicuous We had an early spring. The cherry blossoms came out three weeks before they were expected. Temperatures hit twenty-eight. Then, of course, it snowed.

15. Some revisions: Spring performed a sneak attack and we soon fell for its attraction. … against a backdrop of nearly vanquished snow banks and cleansing misty showers of rain. The lethargic lull of the city was reignited by the promise of an early spring. The snow flakes swirled and wove between each other in an elaborate dance of their own. Cherry blossoms and thermometers swelled, long before they were expected to. It was a memorable March. We could smell the cherry blossoms that began to bloom three weeks before they were expected. We could feel the warmth of the sun…

16. Other noteworthy revisions: • My friend is the Mozart of tardiness, the Michelangelo of running behind schedule. • I am through with being patient. I am through with waiting for people when I could be getting other things done. I am through with sitting around while they finish up whatever they are doing. • Some people have a talent for being late. Going to class—late. Paying the bills—late. Submitting assignments—late.

17. Note the voice! I can see their feigned guilt as they shuffle in after the buzzer rings. My hand pauses only for a second on the chalkboard but I’ve lost my rhythm. I don’t wait. I refuse to wait.

18. … and more: • The street lamp softly flickered above me, mocking me in its broken light show. University assignments weighed me down like concrete bricks… • I sat on a park bench cozy as a rock …. The sun set in the west like a candle just blown out. • My situation was about as dark, dreary, and dismal as one could imagine. I was behind on my assignments for three courses, robbers of my time like Jesse James was of banks. • I perched myself delicately, like an old man cautioning his bones to cooperate, on a park bench.

19. Advantages Can seem witty, sophisticated Implies vision & insight Provides emotional & ethical appeal “the pleasure of self-conscious expression” (Clark) Disadvantages May seem flamboyant or pretentious May not be clear May seem too much like entertainment (adapted from Nevin Laib) Conspicuous style

20. When it may be appropriate: • On significant (i.e. formal or ceremonial) occasions • To elevate topics • To create humour • In literary writing • i.e. can support meaning & sense of occasion

21. What to avoid • What Glaser calls “creative genius” style Across the room sat Aunt Marney, her care-worn, calloused hands crossed in her denim-aproned lap with a resignation born of half a century of stubborn toil on the ungrateful land, her head inclined at a weary, humble angle above a wrinkled breast once fruitful with milk for her abundant, rosy, clamoring offspring, now dry and barren as the untilled acres that surrounded her ramshackle, unpainted shanty. (Voices that put you off, 29)

22. What to avoid (Part 2) • Over-reliance on a single source of impact/interest (monotony – cf. Clark, 45) • Tropes that undermine meaning e.g. “My interest in opera festered for years, as I became a fan of The Magic Flute and La Boheme.” • Also see Glaser, Voices, p. 30 • Mixed metaphors e.g. “I worked like a dog only to get cut off at the knees when the chips were down.” “He’s nothing but a snake in the grass gnawing at the roots of the ship of state.”

23. Advantages Will seem straightforward & businesslike, sincere & unpretentious Suggests confidence in truth of one’s ideas Lets facts “speak for themselves” without focusing attention on author Disadvantages May seem passionless, artless, or mundane May imply lack of enthusiasm Sacrifices attractions of language Diminishes opportunity for ethical appeal (adapted from Nevin Laib) Inconspicuous style

24. When it may be appropriate • When the truth seems self-evident • When accuracy is crucial • When you want to appear mature & dignified, honest & open • When you wish to remove social barriers

25. Debate between “transparent” & “ornate” • The alternative to conspicuous style is also a deliberate choice, a rhetorical stance • Note that plain language has guidelines – i.e. it’s neither automatic nor natural • Clark refers to a style that is “severe and curt rather than decorative and elaborate” (52) • Recent Globe & Mail column by Zsuzsi Gartner, “Take that Mr. Strunk and White!” • Stanley Fish, How to write a sentence (and how to read one)