I think Killingsworth sees the
tropes as flexible because he sees tropes as a figure of speech. Killingsworth
states that “Modern theorists of rhetoric insisted that rhetorical language,
including the use of tropes, is pervasive and unavoidable. All forms of
knowledge and even conventional uses of language are built upon an original
foundation of wordplay and figuration” (122). Killingsworth also defines tropes
as a way to express the emotional quality of our relationship to the world.
Emotional are based on interpretation and therefore, Killingsworth must see
tropes as being flexible enough to argue for its persuasive importance. I think
that tropes can be treated as forms, when need be. However, I don’t think
tropes always have to be treated as forms.
Tropes, like genre can be used to classify but are not solely meant for classification. Tropes can be seen as ways to improve language and persuasiveness just as genre can be seen as a way to expand and increase knowledge. Furthermore, a text in its basic sense is something that conveys meaning. When expanded, the term text can encompass more than just words. As previously stated, a trope at its basic sense is a figure of speech. When expanded upon, the term “express[es] the emotional quality of our relationship to the world” (122). Discourse works in the same way. It basic meaning can be more elaborately defined through reinterpretation.
Killingsworth gives four tropes: Identification/Metaphor, Association/Metonymy, Representation/Synecdoche, and Distance/Irony. The first trope: metaphor directly relates to Daniel’s piece. Killingsworth defines metaphor as “…an identification, a way of bringing together seemingly unlike things,” “…a critical way of thinking, an attempt to bridge conceptual gaps, a mental activity at the very heart of rhetoric” (123). The very title of Daniel’s piece: A Public Secret is a metaphor. The term public means open to all; while the term secret means closed to all. The concept of pairing seemingly unlike things sparks a curiosity in the reader. It makes them look twice and analyze why the two terms are connected. Daniel’s title also touches on the trope irony. Irony, as Killingsworth defines it, “involves inversions and reversals,” “…it turns standard meanings and expectations upside down” (131). Public Secrets is ironic in that the meanings are opposite.
Tropes, like genre can be used to classify but are not solely meant for classification. Tropes can be seen as ways to improve language and persuasiveness just as genre can be seen as a way to expand and increase knowledge. Furthermore, a text in its basic sense is something that conveys meaning. When expanded, the term text can encompass more than just words. As previously stated, a trope at its basic sense is a figure of speech. When expanded upon, the term “express[es] the emotional quality of our relationship to the world” (122). Discourse works in the same way. It basic meaning can be more elaborately defined through reinterpretation.
Killingsworth gives four tropes: Identification/Metaphor, Association/Metonymy, Representation/Synecdoche, and Distance/Irony. The first trope: metaphor directly relates to Daniel’s piece. Killingsworth defines metaphor as “…an identification, a way of bringing together seemingly unlike things,” “…a critical way of thinking, an attempt to bridge conceptual gaps, a mental activity at the very heart of rhetoric” (123). The very title of Daniel’s piece: A Public Secret is a metaphor. The term public means open to all; while the term secret means closed to all. The concept of pairing seemingly unlike things sparks a curiosity in the reader. It makes them look twice and analyze why the two terms are connected. Daniel’s title also touches on the trope irony. Irony, as Killingsworth defines it, “involves inversions and reversals,” “…it turns standard meanings and expectations upside down” (131). Public Secrets is ironic in that the meanings are opposite.
Daniel’s hypertext is easily interpretable as a critique through heteroglossia. Bakhtin states that by means of the social diversity of speech types and the differing individual voice: authorial speech, the speeches of narrators, inserted genres and the speech of characters help heteroglossia can enter the novel (Bakhtin 263). Daniel’s Public Secrets utilizes a number of different voices and narrators to convey the conditions in which prisoners live. Miller’s Genre as Social Action implies that genre draws on recurrent rhetorical situations (Miller 156). In Daniel’s hypertext the recurrent rhetorical situation is the mistreatment of prisoners. The mistreatment of prisoners lead Daniel to criticize the prison system in Public Secret. Longinus sees sublime as “a quality that has a powerful emotional impact on it audience” (345). Longinus’ sublime can be achieved through amplification and visualization. Daniel amplifies and visualizes the realities of the prisoners through the use of their voice recordings. Landow describes hypertext as a “fundamentally intertextual system” (35). Daniel’s Public Secrets is completely intertextual and multimodal. It combines written text with audio as well as visual aspects. Daniel’s author’s statement draws the reader to the main video text. The different aspects work together to create a greater understanding of Daniel’s exigence.
Works Cited
Bakhtin, Mikhail M. “Discourse in the
Novel.” The
Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist.
Austin: U of Texas P, 1981. 259-331.
Killingsworth, M. Jimmie. “Appeal Through
Tropes.” Appeals
in Modern Rhetoric: An Ordinary-
Language Approach.
Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2005. 121-135.
Landow, George P. “Hypertext and Critical
Theory.” In Hypertext
2.0: The Convergence of
Contemporary Critical Theory and
Technology. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins, 1997. 33-48.
Longinus. “From On the Sublime.” The Rhetorical
Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present, Second Edition. Ed. Patricia Bizzell
and Bruce Herzberg. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s,
2001. 344-358.
Miller, Carolyn. “Genre as Social Action.” Quarterly
Journal of Speech 70 (1984): 151-169.
Killingsworth does compare tropes to figures of speech, but he says, “trope is more inclusive [than figure of speech]… [and] captures a truth about rhetorical appeals… [that] always involve swerves, indirections, substitutions, twists, and turns of meaning” (Killingsworth, 121), meaning that while figure of speech is another word for trope for Killingsworth a trope has a deeper meaning. He further explains that, “tropes help us to classify and study other functions of appeals. They suggest how one position [author, audience, or value] can relate to another” (Killingsworth, 122).
ReplyDeleteI was at first going to disagree with your argument that a trope is flexible because Killingsworth has strict definitions for these certain types of tropes, but on further reading of Killingsworth’s essay I found that his definition most in particularly metaphor gives a person a lot of leeway, “we can see that metaphor is not merely one technique among many but is instead a crucial way of thinking, an attempt to bridge conceptual gaps, a metal activity at the vey heart of rhetoric” (Killingsworth, 123). So while he does say that it is in a strict sense supposed to be an attempt to bridge conceptual gaps, it does depend on the interpretation of the person bridging the gaps. Also though we have to keep in consideration are these gaps supposed to be bridged and what was the author’s intentions if there were any in their usage of the trope.
Public Life as irony was something I overlooked. I was too focused on looking at the content for irony that I missed the big trope in front of me. However, it was an occurance to me that the whole website itself was a trope: the website is a prison.