HUMOR AS IT RELATES TO RHETORIC, COMPOSITION, AND DISCOURSE
The classical rhetoricians of ancient Greece and Rome were concerned with the “five canons of rhetoric: 1. Invention, 2. Arrangement, 3. Style, 4. Memory, and 5. Delivery. Aristotle provided insights into invention, arrangement and style. But Aristotle’s most important contribution was in the direction of argument and persuasion. He said that an argument is usually developed from one of the following points of view: ETHOS: (Speaker Credibility), PATHOS: (Audience Appreciation), and LOGOS: (Logical Development).
Walker Gibson later wrote a book entitled, Tough, Sweet, and Stuffy in which he modernized Aristotle’s Ethos, Pathos, and Logos. For Gibson, Tough language was the language of the novel (told from the point of view of the author, or a character). Sweet language was the language of the advertisement (AROMA: Advertising Rhetoric of Madison Avenue, which is written for particular audiences). And Stuffy language is the language of academe (standard English).
But why is it that ambiguity is bad, while double entendre is good;
cliches are bad while idiomatic expressions can be good;
confusion is bad, but paradox is good;
contradiction and incongruity are bad while oxymorons are good;
faulty grammar is bad, but anacoluthon (intentional faulty grammar) is good;
faulty parallelism is bad, but zeugma (intentional faulty parallelism) is good; repetitiveness is bad, but parody and caricature are good;
exaggeration is bad but hyperbole is good;
a spelling is bad, but cacography (intentionally bad writing) is good;
understatement is bad, but litotes is good.
For each of these pairs, the first example is an “error,” while the second is a “rhetorical device.”
How is it possible to distinguish between an “error” and a “rhetorical device” in student writing?
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