Daniel and Killingsworth

In our understanding of Killingsworth's typology of four tropes, we must be able to determine "what they reveal but also what they conceal." (121) The four main tropes described in this essay are metaphors, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony. Each trope is flexible because they can combine together or relate to each other in persuasive ways. In this way, they are persuasively important. Killingsworth says, "All forms of knowledge and even conventional uses of language are built upon an original foundation of wordplay and figuration." (122) In this way, tropes are treated as forms and art. Form comes from the form of knowledge and how it is expressed and used.

These forms are built upon the foundation of wordplay and figuration which are an example of the artistic quality of language and knowledge. The way Killingsworth describes the word trope reminds me of Locke's concept of signs as symbols. In some ways, metaphors and the consequent tropes, can be treated or viewed as signs or symbols for what they mean. Of the tropes that Kilingsworth discusses, I believe Daniel pulls from all four in her hypertext essay. "Metaphor with perspective, metonymy with reduction, synecdoche with representation, and irony with dialectic." (123) She makes use of the perspective of the current inmates by interviewing them and having their voice in her hypertext.

Their perspective and point of view on the situation brings out their emotional appeals. Metonymy is at work in her hypertext as the essay represents all of the emotion and anger that is contained in those walls. The hypertext is also a representation of the life that the inmates live inside the walls. Dialectic is used by each of the inmates to ironically describe the live they are "living". In all of their accounts, however, they aren't actually living life at all in any way. They are reduced to a body that is state property and kept alive to "live" in the institution. The characteristics of Daniel's hypertext essay that make it especially interpretable as a critique are her own personal accounts of her experience as well as how she relates to those women. In the end she says that she is incarcerated as long as they are, that all of society is incarcerated as long as someone is.

Daniel, Sharon. “Public Secrets.” Vectors 2.2 (Winter 2007): n. pag. Web. http://www.vectorsjournal.org/projects/index.php?project=57

Killingsworth, M. Jimmie. “Appeal Through Tropes.” Appeals in Modern Rhetoric: An Ordinary- Language Approach. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2005. 121-135.