FIGURES OF SPEECH
The MASTER TROPES include:
1. Metaphor (Seeing Something in Terms of Something Else): Using “my lover is a rose” to represent the beauty and pleasure of my lover;
2. Irony (Something Which is Extremely Inappropriate): Using “a bull in a China shop” to represent something extremely out of place; There are many types of Irony.
3. Metonymy (Association): Using “the crown” or “the throne” to represent the power of the monarchy;
4.Synecdoche (Hierarchal Whole vs. Part Relationship): Using “all hands on deck” or “seven head of cattle” to represent sailors, or cattle.
5. The MINOR TROPES include: Cliché, Hyperbole (Overstatement), Idiom, Imagery, Litotes (Understatement), Onomatopoiea (Sound Symbolism), Simile, Symbol, and Understatement.
NOTE: Tropes (Deep Structure) should not be confused with Schemes (Surface Structure). Schemes include Assonance, Alliteration, Eye Rhyme, Feminine Rhyme, Internal Rhyme, Masculine Rhyme, Scansion, Slant Rhyme, etc.
The answers may lie in our eight cognitive biases (Goodwyn, etc). Both, including 'history', needs a good mixture of predictable and novel; real and 'unreal' (subjective terms), engaged relevance and escapism; etc. These are matters of texture. The core content has to be satisfied in all media (see my paper Blueprint on www.edmondfurter.wordpress.com). Myth holds answers (see my edition about Hercules, Arcadia, and Greece myth maps). Culture, like dreams, do not care what kind of similarity or symbolism or Tropes or Schemes are used, as long as it is not just one kind, yet the kinds are staggered. The ultimate answer is probably in a set of Zipf /grammatical ratios. I suspect devices and texture also has a minor archetypal structure, like core content does. Please advise me of the outcome of your study.
Edmond: Very insightful response. I'm recommending it to other researchers in the field of literary studies. Thanks, and have a great 2024.
Your work on humour demonstrates several aspects of subconscious, collective behaviour, that may be relevant here too. Noting that the mechanisms you isolate above (tropes) are structuralist 'grammatical' devices, near impossible to use consciously, or to fake. They remain a kind of 'attitude' and inspiration in the subconscious, while authors, and journalists, concentrate on rationalising everything. News and legend are first takes on mythologising, which never changes in core content. Nor does humour. One of the authors you quote in your Humour powerpoint presentation, mistakenly asserts that humour 'changes' by time and nationality. Another author that you quote there, recognises the universal features and functions of humour. Your musings on tropes makes you a structuralist, the approach that will make anthropology a science, eventually. Currently anthropology and other human 'sciences' remain crafts, practicing culture instead of studying it.
Edmond: Excellent response. I'm recommending it to other scholars. Your comments bring to mind the writings of Carl Jung, both his work with Archetypes (and Shadow Archetypes), and his work with the "Collective Unconscious," allusions that are so important and symbolic that they travel from one generation to the next. Again, thanks for your insights.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Correction