Englis h 5 7 3 0 rhetoric


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English 5730 is taught by Dr. Richard Nordquist.
Armstrong Atlantic State University
Savannah, Georgia 31419
912-921-5991
e-mail: engl5730@lycos.com              

 


E N G L I S H   5 7 3 0  rhetoric

Rhetoric Home | News | Rhetorical Resources  |  Rhetorical Terms


Glossary of Rhetorical Terms

catachresis to distinctio

catachresis  
An extreme, far-fetched, or mixed metaphor; strained or deliberately paradoxical figure of speech; deliberate substitution of an inexact word in place of the correct one.
(Pronunciation "cat a KREE sis") [Gk. "misapplication"]
-"To take arms against a sea of troubles." (Shakespeare, Hamlet)
-"Red trains cough Jewish underwear for keeps!  Expanding smells of silence.   Gravy snot whistling like sea birds."
(Amiri Baraka, "The Dutchman")
-"The moon was full. The moon was so bloated it was about to tip over. Imagine awakening to find the moon flat on its face on the bathroom floor, like the late Elvis Presley, poisoned by banana splits. It was a moon that could stir wild passions in a moo cow. A moon that could bring out the devil in a bunny rabbit. A moon that could turn lug nuts into moonstones, turn little Red Riding Hood into the big bad wolf."
(Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker)

categoria 
Direct exposure of an adversary's faults.
[Gk. "accusation"]
- "I accuse Lt.  Col.  du Paty de Clam of being the diabolical creator of this miscarriage of justice — unwittingly, I would like to believe — and of defending this sorry deed, over the last three years, by all manner of ludricrous and evil machinations. 
"I accuse General Mercier of complicity, at least by mental weakness, in one of the greatest inequities of the century. 
"I accuse General Billot of having held in his hands absolute proof of Dreyfus’s innocence and covering it up, and making himself guilty of this crime against mankind and justice, as a political expedient and a way for the compromised General Staff to save face. 
"I accuse Gen.  de Boisdeffre and Gen.  Gonse of complicity in the same crime, the former, no doubt, out of religious prejudice, the latter perhaps out of that esprit de corps that has transformed the War Office into an unassailable holy ark. 
"I accuse Gen.  de Pellieux and Major Ravary of conducting a villainous enquiry, by which I mean a monstrously biased one, as attested by the latter in a report that is an imperishable monument to naïve impudence. 
"I accuse the three handwriting experts, Messrs.  Belhomme, Varinard and Couard, of submitting reports that were deceitful and fraudulent, unless a medical examination finds them to be suffering from a condition that impairs their eyesight and judgement.  
"I accuse the War Office of using the press, particularly L’Eclair and L’Echo de Paris, to conduct an abominable campaign to mislead the general public and cover up their own wrongdoing. 
"Finally, I accuse the first court martial of violating the law by convicting the accused on the basis of a document that was kept secret, and I accuse the second court martial of covering up this illegality, on orders, thus committing the judicial crime of knowingly acquitting a guilty man."
(Emile Zola, "J'Accuse," 13 Jan. 1898)
-"The average American judge, as everyone knows, is a mere rabbinical automation, with no more give and take in his mind than you will find in the mind of a terrier watching a rathole."
(H. L. Mencken, "Mr. Justice Holmes")
-"You people and sixty-two million other Ameicans are listening to me right now. Because less than three percent of you people read books. Because less than fifteen percent of you read newspapers. Because the only truth you know is what you get over this tube. Right now, there is a whole, an entire generation that never knew anything that didn't come out of this tube. This tube is the gospel, the ultimate revelation. This tube can make or break Presidents, Popes, Prime Ministers. This tube is the most awesome, god-damned force in the whole godless world . . . We deal in illusions, man. None of it is true! But you people sit there day after day, night after night, all ages, colors, creeds--we're all you know. You're beginning to believe the illusions we're spinning here. You're beginning to think that the tube is reality and that your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you. You dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube. You even think like the tube. This is mass madness. You maniacs. In God's name, you people are the real thing. We are the illusion. So turn off your television sets. Turn them off now. Turn them off right now. Turn them off and leave them off. Turn them off right in the middle of this sentence I am speaking to you now. Turn them off!"
(Peter Finch as Howard Beale in Network, 1976)

chiasmus
A verbal pattern in which the second half of an expression is balanced against the first but with the parts reversed. (Similar to antimetabole, chiasmus also involves a reversal of structures in successive phrases or clauses.)   The adjectival form is chiastic.
(Pronunciation: "ky-AZ-mus") [derived from Greek letter"X"]
--"I flee who chases me, and chases who flees me." (Ovid)
--"Fair is foul, and foul is fair." (Shakespeare, Macbeth I.i)
--"Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good."(Samuel Johnson)
--"If black men have no rights in the eyes of the white men, of course the whites can have none in the eyes of the
blacks." (Frederick Douglass, "An Appeal to Congress for Impartial Suffrage")
--"The question isn't whether Grape Nuts are good enough for you; it's whether you are good enough for Grape Nuts." (advertisement)
--"The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order."
(Alfred North Whitehead)
--"I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me." (Winston Churchill)       
--"The value of marriage is not that adults produce children, but that children produce adults."
(Peter De Vries)
--"Don't sweat the petty things--and don't pet the sweaty things."  (anonymous)
--"Never let a fool kiss you--or a kiss fool you."  (anonymous)
--"Whether we bring our enemies to justice or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done."
(George W. Bush)
[See also Dr. Mardy Grothe's web site, Chiasmus.com.]

chreia
(Pronounced "CRAY-yuh")
An elementary exercise, or progymnasmata, in which the rhetor elaborates on a famous event or saying.

cliche
A trite expression--often a figure of speech whose effectiveness has been worn out through overuse and excessive familiarity.
[Fr. "a stereotype plate"]
-"That's the way with these directors, they're always biting the hand that lays the golden egg."
(Samuel Goldwyn)
-"Live and learn."
-"What goes around comes around."

climax
Mounting by degrees through words or sentences of increasing weight and in parallel construction (see auxesis), with an emphasis on the high point or culmination of a series of events or of an experience.
[Gk. "ladder"]
"I came, I saw, I conquered." (Julius Caesar)
"I am the way, the truth, and the life." (St.John Chapter 14, verse 4)  
"Nothing has been left undone to cripple their minds, debase their moral stature, obliterate all traces of their relationship to mankind."
(Lloyd Garrison, Narrative of the Life of an American Slave)
"Out of its vivid disorder comes order; from its rank smell rises the good aroma of courage and daring; out of its preliminary shabbiness comes the final splendor. And buried in the familiar boasts of its advance agents lies the modesty of most of its people."
(E. B. White, "The Ring of Time"-describing a circus in Florida)

commonplace
Any statement or bit of knowledge that is commonly shared among a given audience or a community; also, an elementary exercise, or progymnasmata; also, in invention, another term for a common topic.

commoratio
Repetition of a point several times in different words.
(Pronunciation: "ko mo RAHT see oh")  [L. "dwelling"]
-"What didst thou covet?  What didst thou wish?  What didst thou desire?" (Cicero)
-"Brave Sir Robin ran away
Bravely ran away, away
When danger reared its ugly head
He bravely turned his tail and fled
Yes, Brave Sir Robin turned about
Undoubtedly he chickened out
Bravely taking to his feet,
He beat a very brave retreat . . .."  (Monty Python and the Holy Grail)
-"This parrot is no more!  It has ceased to be!  It's expired and gone to meet its maker!  This is a late parrot!  It's a stiff!  Bereft of life it rests in peace--if you hadn't nailed it to the perch it would be pushing up the daisies!  It's rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible!  This is an ex-parrot!"  (John Cleese in Monty Python's Flying Circus)

complex sentence
A sentence that contains at least one independent clause and one dependent clause.
-"He was like a cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow."
(George Eliot, Adam Bede)
-"I think we ought to have as great a regard for religion as we can, so as to keep it out of as many things as possible." 
(Sean O'Casey, The Plough and the Stars)

compound sentence
A sentence that contains at least two independent clauses.
"The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the teacup opens
A lane to the land of the dead."
(W. H. Auden, "As I Walked Out One Evening")

concession
Figure wherein a rhetor concedes a disputed point or leaves a disputed point to the audience to decide.
-"I am not finding fault with this use of our flag; for in order not to seem eccentric I have swung around, now, and joined the nation in the conviction that nothing can sully a flag.  I was not properly reared, and had the illusion that a flag was a thing which must be sacredly guarded against shameful uses and unclean contacts, lest it suffer pollution; and so when it was sent out to the Philippines to float over a wanton war and a robbing expedition I supposed it was polluted, and in an ignorant moment I said so.  But I stand corrected.  I concede and acknowledge that it was only the government that sent it on such an errand that was polluted.  Let us compromise on that. I am glad to have it that way. For our flag could not well stand pollution, never having been used to it, but it is different with the administration."
(Mark Twain, 1901)

confirmation




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