It is necessary for the tropes that Killingsworth describes to be flexible outside of form because they are necessary to understanding the way in which we think. The metaphor and metonymy tropes are described as the two basic forms of thinking. Because of this these devices invade more than just the literary form in which they were created. Metaphor and metonymy can be understood as similar to Miller’s genre. Just as Miller says that, “a rhetorically sound definition of genre must not be focused on the substance or form of a genre but on the action it is used to accomplish” (Miller 151), so should the trope be examined by the action that it accomplishes.
The metaphor is, “a way of bringing together seemingly unlike things” (Killingsworth 123). Likewise metonymy associates a thing with a closely related thing. Because these forms are determined by the actions that they preform they can be extended into broader things such as genres, non literary texts, and discourses. The most crucial trope in this idea is irony. Irony’s action, “involves inversions and reversals. It turns standard meanings and expectations upside down.” The irony of a discourse can be revealed over time when certain events come to light or when the foundation of it is pulled out from underneath it. I think that this trope is the most evident one in Daniel’s hypertext essay. There is a strong similarity between irony of this essay and the example that Killingsworth uses of the feminist responses to the sexist advertisements.
As Locke says, Irony involves the use of both wit and judgement and to understand the disassociation between the women and the advertisement is an exercise in irony. Likewise, Daniel uses the testimonies of the women in the prison system to allow the audience to see the irony of the situation that they are in. She does this very cleverly by using synecdoche to have the interviewed women represent the whole. While I don’t think that she is asking us to believe that every woman in the prison system is identical to those interviewed, it is a strong way to reveal the irony. Like Killingsworth says, “Say you are writing a paper on problems in education and, for an example, you choose a story about a bad teacher you had in high school. Your example serves a representative function; your hope is that your readers will have had similar experiences that, taken together with yours, form something like a data set. Your story is a representative part of the whole set” (131). By revealing the irony she is building the case of her critique.
This critique is driven home by the fact that she uses the characteristics of the critical genre. She provides interviews that humanize the situation rather than just address it objectively. This is a cue taken from previous situations in which, “ a blend of formal and substantive features that produce a certain effect in a given situation” is used (Miller 153). The concept of tropes are necessary to understanding Daniel’s essay because it shows gives you a concept of the inner machinations behind her essay.
Works Cited:
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.
Miller, Carolyn. “Genre as Social Action.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 70 (1984): 151-169.
I like how you define Daniel's ironic portrayals of the women she interviews as representations of the whole. They are, and to add, that is why her argument against the injustices in the judicial system is so strong. She combines both the formal and "substantive" use of Killingsworth's tropes of identification/metaphor, association/metonymy, representation/synecdoche, and distance/irony, giving the project a heteroglossic narrative. She creates an easy way for readers to notice the disparity between what they already know about prison systems, and the truth about them. That use of contrast through tropes (in Daniel's case, primarily irony), helps make her argument clear and strong as it guides the reader to "the point."
ReplyDeleteI agree with your comparison of tropes to Miller's ideas about genre. I like that you say that genre, metaphor, and metonymy could all be understood in a similar fashion. If we see genre as a social action then we should focus on the action it is used to accomplish. Tropes can also, as you said, be examined by the action that it accomplishes. Tropes, just like genre, can be a social construct. In the movie trailer case studies about genre, we see that we understand the genre of the movie because we can connect one trailer to other trailers/movies that we have seen. A metaphor is used to bring to unlike thing together and metonymy connects one thing to another closely related thing. To be able to understand these tropes, one must have an understanding, just like in genre, of the social context or action in which they would normally take place.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the claims that you made towards Daniel's piece in referencing synecdoche, yet I fail to see the irony in the situation of the women that she interviewed. For me, the "revelation" that is so essential to irony, in literature, drama, etc., came more in immersing yourself into the piece rather than skimming through it on the surface. I definitely agree with the humanistic aspect of it through voice and audition, and I can also see the elements of synecdoche throughout the piece, which is was very interesting to unpack. Tropes are, exactly as you detailed, much like genre in the aspect of social ties and meanings - each requires something of that exact nature in order to carry weight and effectively project a message.
ReplyDeleteI also wrote about the similarity between trope and genre in my blog post. I like how you point out that both Killingsworth and Miller have a similar assertion that it is all about the action that takes place.
ReplyDeleteI do become confused however as your post leads from discussing genre to your statement "This critique is driven home by the fact that she uses the characteristics of the critical genre" in the last paragraph. Are you declaring that hypertext is a form of genre? From my understanding, I thought hypertext is something that could be found in different genres of texts. Of course, Daniel's is called a "hypertextual essay." So now I am definitely not saying who is write or who is wrong. Is it the genre of "essay" that contains hypertext, or is "hypertext essay" its own genre?