The Trope

Killingsworth defines “trope” as “just another word for ‘figure of speech,’” but proceeds to say he prefers the term trope instead of figure of speech “because figures of speech are also figures of thought…and writing.”  He says that “troping” is a “’turn of phrase,’ ‘turn of thought,’ and ‘twist of plot’” (121).  

He describes four different types of tropes (appeals):

• Identification/metaphor
• Association/metonymy
• Represent/synecdoche
• Irony

There were two different ideas that sparked my interest from this passage.  After reading his further description of tropes,

“Tropes help us to classify and study other functions of appeals” (121).

I immediately thought of genre.  From my understanding, genre is a way of classifying a text.  I suppose an obvious difference between genre and trope would be, as he stated before, trope is more “inclusive.”  Genre, I think, is a much more broader term and has many different classifications than the four classification trope has.

I then identified the trope of identification/metaphor within Daniel’s hypertext essay.  Killingsworth defines metaphor as “a strong identification” which he then defines as “a way of bringing together unlike things” (123). This is prominent in the most obvious sense in Daniel’s hypertext essay, when she bring together unlike people (civilians and prisoners).  

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.