"Appeals Through Tropes" further accentuates the notion that language reflects the collective ideas from certain cultures; similes, metaphors etc. In this case by troping, certain phrases are coined in correlation with the relationships between “unfamiliar things to the familiar experience of physical existence” (124). Metaphors, as the master trope, is viewed as an analogy as opposed to a category of simple expression. A wonderful example of that would be the expression “A Rose that Grew from Concrete”. What's implied is that a physical rose (something of beauty) can grow from concrete (something rough & rugged).
The expression is often used to symbolize a rags to riches story. Nevertheless, the play on words are quite poetic; one is using phrases to emphasize or compare similarities between something physical and an idea. On the other hand a metonymy is rather the case where two objects are being compared but can be interchangeable. However the two objects don't necessary have to be related. The text gives a fair example of Queen Elizabeth and how she is culturally referenced as just “The Crown”. I wonder if a metonymy is meant to be subjective, meaning by is it crafted to be debatable. I mean, is Queen Elizabeth worthy of such a title? Similar to a metonymy, a synecdoche is merely the same concept except the two objects are closely related. For example, “we don’t' have wheels” implies that the speak doesn’t have a car (131). The last trope would be Irony which is described as the most difficult of the four. The author has a statement that, from the surface, means one thing but actually represents another. Like the title “Public Secrets” is ironic in it's own right. Secrets aren’t meant to be exfoliated but it's somehow public. It's meant to establish a sense of the unknown or what's our there that has not been questioned.
Killingsworth, M. Jimmie. “Appeal Through Tropes.” Appeals in Modern Rhetoric: An Ordinary- Language Approach. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2005. 121-135.
I really liked what you did here. I'm really appreciative that you broke down the tropes and talked about each one. The examples you used were outside the box. I enjoyed that because it didn't shove Daniel in your face. I think the next step to take world be to take Daniel and now incorporate her piece into your analysis. I would also love to see more quotes from Killingsworth to support your claims.
ReplyDeleteAll in all, I think you did a really great job. I definitely enjoyed reading your piece.
I'm thinking of modes of behavior as tropal now. Where do we begin to decipher a violent outburst of anger as opposed to a organized implosion of anger. The two ideas are closely associated in that they are about anger but the subject outburt/implosion are opposite of each other.
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