Figures of Speech Served Fresh

Dear Figaro,

Germans drink beer, lots of beer. One of their favourite brands is Bitburger, produced of course in the town Bitburg.The CEO of Bitburger sitting in a bar, overheard a customer saying to the bartender:'Bitte ein Bit.' The CEO rushed to his office assembled his staff and exclaimed: 'Eureka! We got a slogan:Bitte ein Bit'The slogan literally means:'Please a Bitburger' or more fully:'Please give me a glass of Bitburger.'

Maestro, Figaro, I don't know whether you are a beerdrinker but please could you analyse this slogan for me.I have the feeling that it is loaded with rhetorical techniques.

Cheers,

Arie Vrolijk

Dear Arie,

Figaro does drink beer, danke very much. Mostly, the brewery is using a PARONOMASIA, which is simply a play on words that sound alike.

Suds us fine.

Yrs,
Figaro

Dear Figaro,


Jack Kemp often restarts his sentences.

Ex:‘I can't wait to make that case. I can't wait to make that case for Bob Dole in every community and every neighborhood of the United States of America.’
Jack Kemp, 10 augustus 1996.

Is there a rhetorical term for such verbal behavior?

Thanks, Figaro, thanks.

Arie Vrolijk

It's a palilogia, a general term for repeated repetition. But it's an interesting sort of layering palilogia, adding thoughts like roofing tiles, and I know of no specific term for this. Let's just call it a KEMP.

Fig.

I came across your site while searching for examples of different rhetorical schemes. Someone asked the question whether chiasmus and antimetabole were the same to which you reply that they pretty much are. I have been taught that antimetabole involves a repetition of words ie. "One should eat to live, not live to eat" whereas chiasmus is the reversal of grammatical structures without repetition of words ie. "Exalts his enemies, his friends destroys". Is this not correct?
Thanks,
Kay

Yes, technically, you are right. The antimetabole criss-crosses identical phrases or clauses, while the chiasmus does the same with thoughts and, sometimes, grammar. But rhetoricians through the ages, have equated the two, and the chiasmus can be seen as a generic term that covers both. When in doubt, Figaro tries to simplify. (He simplifies when he's in doubt.)

I wonder if there is a named figure of speech for the habit of taking things seriously because of one's own experience. (EG: Al Gore didn't take tobacco-growing seriously as a moral dilemma until his own sister died of cnacer.)I'd love your help.

Best wishes
rdn

It's actually two rhetorical devices: the reluctant conclusion ("I used to feel that way until the facts or my own experience overwhelmed me"), and PHRONESIS, or practical wisdom, often expressed through the story of a personal experience.

Fig.

Dear Figaro,

A fantastic site!

Question: Though such figures as circumlocution, apoplanesis, apagoresis all imply a kind of turning-away from the issue at hand, do you know of any figures that specifically name the actions of evasion, avoidance and circumvention? I suppose I'm searching for the "Oh, let's not go there" figure.

Dear Innie,

You stumped me. Maybe that's simply because Figaro's exhausting foray into legitimate labor has slowed his brain. Check back in a few days; maybe I'll have an answer. Meanwhile, anyone else want to take a shot?

Fig.

Hello Figaro,

I just happened on your site today, while searching for 'diazeugma', since I thought I had come up with a term and a double-layered zeugma at once. I was surprised.

Anyway, I read your Monty Python piece, and much appreciated it. However, I was disappointed to find that you did not mention the passage (in the Quest for the Holy Grail) with the witch, where the knights save a woman from burning by using the argument that witches are made from wood; we can't see if she is a bridge, because bridges can be made of stone; but wood floats; ducks also float; therefore if she weighs the same as a duck then she will float and is therefore wooden, and hence a witch (or something along those lines). This manages to combine almost every syllogistic fallacy in a single passage and earn Bedivere a knighthood (another zeugma, albeit it of a multiliminal, postmodern mise en abyme sort of fashion ;).

Just wanted to mention that skit.

Thanks for the reading: I have always favoured Catullus over Cicero as a contemporary of Caesar's, but much enjoyed Cicero's prose and construction nonetheless. It is good to see that the art has not been completely forgotten.

Dear Az,

I spent months trying to categorize the hundreds of fallacies in the canon and boil them down into a few simple logical mistakes. I came up with Seven Deadly Logical Sins, which you'll find in my book. One of the biggest is the False Comparison, in which the sinner smooshes apples and oranges together. The witch scene's many fallacies all boil down to that one sin. That scene has always disturbed me, by the way--partly because the accused witch looks a lot like Figaro's wife.

Now for Catullus: I like him too, but comparing him with Cicero is like weighing Walt Whitman against Abraham Lincoln, or, um, weighing a duck and a witch. One is a poet, the other a rhetorician. This is why our culture fails to appreciate Daniel Webster, by the way. His speeches aren't great literature, no. But they're perfectly wonderful rhetoric.

Pedantically yours,
Fig.

Hiya Figaro, I just want to thank you for the awesome website!
As per request, here's a question for you:

A friend persuaded me (not with rhetoric, alas) into watching the famous 90's chick flick "Clueless".
There's a very funny speech in that movie (the speech is reproduced here: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/MovieSpeeches/moviespeechclueless.html) in which the main character, Cher, says, "And in conclusion, may I please remind you that it does not say R.S.V.P. on the Statue of Liberty?"
I wanted to know, is this a rhetorical figure/fallacy? If so, which is it?

Thanks!

Fia

Dear Fia,

We're getting epiphonemas coming out of our ears. (See the Darwin entry: http://www.figarospeech.com/it-figures/2006/10/21/darwins-trick.html.) The epiphonema is the bang-up summary that brings the audience to its feet. In Alicia Silverstone's case, it concludes a detailed description of a garden party where people showed up who had not RSVP'd. That in itself is a catachresis, the metaphor gone wild.

Actually, Figaro found the scene a bit tedious. But our wife was with us, so we forced ourselves to chuckle appreciatively. Figaro does not stand in the way of a chick flick.

Yrs,
Fig.

Dear Figaro:
Today's (witty) Daily Figure reminds me of a question I have tried to investigate: what is the difference between a clichÈ and an idiom? I recently copyedited a book manuscript and was faced with far too many phrases like "took me under her wing" and "walking on clouds" and "the cherry on the cake" and so forth. I marked them as clichÈ and suggested reworking, but I expect the writer considered them acceptable as idioms. I looked at your March 29 Daily Figure on idioms, but still see "take it with a grain of salt" as a clichÈ. Does one term give automatic membership to the other's club? Would love to know your thoughts or recommended reading on it.

My thanks,
Lisa

Dear Lisa,
There is indeed a fine line (to coin an idiom) between an idiom and a cliché. That's in part because the ancients don't seem to have made the distinction; in fact, they loved hearing tried and true (idiom) language, taking the attitude we moderns have toward music. The ancients enjoyed the performance of the words as much as their originality, just as we love to hear Mozart for the umpty-umpth (idiom) time, or nod our heads to sampled music in hip hop. In other words (idiom), the ancients didn't sneer the way we do at a cracking good cliché.

On the other hand (idiom), our writing-obsessed, copywrite-burdened intelligentsia demand that every piece of thought be made from scratch (idiom). We don't expect writers to make up new words for every thought, but we recoil at over-familiar combinations of words.

At any rate (idiom), here's the distinction: an idiom combines words to fill a language gap. It serves as a kind of amalgamated word all its own. A cliché is an idiom (or a longer combination) that is hackneyed, useless or pretentious, and deserves to die.

For example, any editor who uses "The Write Stuff" as her business card slogan is guilty of a cliché and deserves to...well, let's just say she would be in Figaro's doghouse -- to use an idiom that teeters toward clichédom.

Yrs,
Figaro

According to your explanation of what "figures of speech" are you say that the Greeks called them "Schemes" (schema). However, I believe if you look in The Rhetoric, what we call figures of speech (and the examples you give - simile, hyperbole, etc) were then called "Tropes." Schema referred to the rhythmic patterns - such as parallelism, alliteration, and epistrophe.

To the lay person this might not be a big deal, to the student that needs to know the difference on an exam, it is everything. :-)

Dear Prof,

You are absolutely correct, and you'll find the distinctions accurately reflected in my book. Figures of speech mess with rhythm and order, tropes swap one thing for another, and figures of thought are argument mini-tactics. If Figaro caused a student to blow his exam, he offers his apologies and this advice: never trust a blog.

Fig.

What can you tell us about the rhetorical figure "alloiosis" and a non-canoncial figure "alloiostrophe" or "alloiotropos"? Definitions? Primary text for theory? Contemporary examples?

Thanks!

mlm & jss

Dear M&J,

The alloisis (Greek for "difference") is the this-but-not-that figure and a type of antithesis. Best current example: Cindy Sheehan's protest sign outside Bush's ranch saying, "Why make time for donors and not for me?"

The alloistrophe is...what the heck is an alloistrophe?

Fig.

What do you call it when jargon is exapted for general use?
Doc L

If the jargon consists of more than one word, then its adopted version is an idiom.

Fig.

Where does the phrase "Give someone the business" come from?
Carolqua

Dear Carolqua,

I have no idea of the origin of that expression--which, by the way, is an idiom.

Figaro

Dear Figaro,
What is the meaning of "Life's Rich Pageant"?
Stephanie Harvard

My Dear Stephanie,

It means a pretty good album by REM, of course; but it also celebrates the wonderful rhetorical concept of COPIA, championed by the great scholar and rhetorician Desiderius Erasmus. Copia (Latin for "plenitude") is a quality of language and a celebration of God's infinite riches. It fosters elaborate, rich speech and scorns the parsimonious rhetoric of Puritans, scientists, and too many Americans.

If that answer seems rather copious, it was meant to be.

Abundantly Yours,
Figaro

Dear Figaro,

Basingstoke is a town in South England referenced in Gilbert and Sullivan's "Ruddigore." Apparently the joke is that there was a lunatic asylum that resided there, but upon further research the fact is that the asylum was not established until 1914, almost 25 years *after* the composition was completed. I'm trying to come up with the literary figure of speech for this, I remember Virgil would cite technology in the Aeneid when it hadn't existed yet in the time period he was writing about. What's it called...?

Basingstoke Confusion

Dear Bascon,

The closest figure would be a prolepsis, a figure that states something in the future as if it already existed. The word comes from the Greek for "anticipation," appropriately enough. Usually, the figure has to do with the immediate future ("I'm a dead man!"), though, and Richard Lanham assigns the prolepsis to anticipation of the opponent's argument. Maybe a better term would be "ESP."

Yrs,
Figaro

Dear Figaro,

I am going crazy on the term "wax philosophical" or "waxing philosophical" and possibly "waxing lyrical"... I have been lead to believe that waxing lyrical was the original term. I hear many answers that wag the dog when I ask about its origins. Can you enlighten me? I want to be able to use it in conversation with confidence but whenever I use it, thinking it means polishing over the subject matter Ad infinitum... the person pauses and chuckles... and always says, "To the contrary..." and continues their diatribe like a whooping bird with a whooping cough.

L'Oracle de L'Amour

Dear Lorry,

"Waxing lyrical" is an IDIOM, a set of words with a single meaning. You've confused the two senses of "wax"; in this case, it means "to expand," as in, "the moon is waxing." (The opposite of "wax" is "wane.") So to wax lyrical, or wax poetic, means to use expansive language.

Personally, Figaro prefers to wax rhetorical.

Yrs,
Fig.

Dear Figaro,

The Reverend Jackson likes to repeat short sentences and in the following part he also makes fun of the name Bush. Can you
attach labels to these techniques?
Here follows the sequence:
George w. is an affable man, a friendly man. But he stood with Jefferson Davis and chose the confederate flag over the
American flag. He refused to offer leadership on hate crimes legislation and wants to give the surplus back to the richest 20% to buy more yachts.
I say there is a lesson here. Stay out of the bushes.
He picked Cheney who voted against the clean air act, and to keep nelson Mandela in jail. Stay out of the bushes.

He gave emergency relief not to poor children, but to big oil. Stay out of the bushes.

He wouldn’t even spend the money Texas was given for children’s who didn’t have health care, stay out of the bushes.

A Quest For The Moreal Center?
Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, Sr.
DNC, August 15, 2000

Arnie

Dear Arnie,

When you repeat words at the end of successive clauses or sections, you're performing an ANTISTROPHE ("turning around"). Jesse's bushy punning constitutes an ANTANACLASIS ("bending back"), a kind of pun.

Yrs,
Figaro

Hi Figaro!

I was looking for your post on President Clinton's "...depends on what the definition of is is", or Senator Kerry's ""You bet we might have." --when asked if he would have gone to war against Saddam Hussein if he refused to disarm, or...

-Jack

Dear Jack,

I do talk about Clinton's entertainingly stupid lawyerism in my book, but the blog is usually reserved for recently uttered quotations and, um, Shakespeare.

Figaro is often asked about his own political leanings. He's a slightly whiggish Federalist.

Yrs,
Figaro

Figmeister,

I enjoy your daily email and someday I'll get to your book. But for now a
question (if you have time for an answer): Do you have an opinion on what steps might be taken to increase a knowledge of logic among the general
population ... maybe just in the schools?

Timothy

Dear Timothy,

Let me first address the most important part of your question. You can "get to my book" by pre-ordering it here: http://www.inpraiseofargument.squarespace.com/upcoming-in-praise-of-argument.

Oh, wait. That wasn't a question.

Logic should be studied in the context of fallacies in popular media and current events, so that there's some meaning to what students learn; otherwise, it can be so crushingly dull.

Classroom logic in the past focused entirely on dialectic, the formal kind of rational conversation that makes everybody sound like Mr. Spock. Aristotle himself went beyond dialectic in his book on rhetoric, inventing a persuasive form of logic that's much more applicable to everyday speech.

Which still fails to answer your question. To get schools to teach it, we should start with the elite liberal arts colleges and work our way down. Get undergraduates to understand informal and rhetorical logic. Alumni can have a great influence on colleges, especially the private ones. Visit deans of faculty, talk to students, sponsor lectures by rhetoricians.

(Figaro is working up a whizbang presentation on how to inoculate yourself against analogies. He plans to give various versions of it to schools, corporations, and any other group that will sit still. Email him if you're interested.)

Eventually, what the students learn in college, they'll begin teaching in high school. Eventually, we'll have enough parents with a smattering of logic so that they'll start encouraging elementary and middle schools to teach it. And suddenly, attack ads won't work, politicians won't have to suck up to special interests, and we we'll no longer start wars on the basis of logical fallacies!

Sorry. I got carried away. Rather illogical of me.

Yrs,
Figaro

Dear Figaro,

A speaker often makes in the start of his speech a reference to time and or place. Example:"Four years ago, four years ago I stood in this very room when we made history and we have made history again tonight my friends here in New Hampshire." (Pat Buchanan, after winning the campaign's first presidential primary, 1996.)

Is there a term for this technique? Thank you in advance,

Arie Vrolijk

Dear Arie,

There is a general term for recalling people or things of the past: anamnesis, which is Greek for "remembrance." It's a form of analogy. By connecting present events with historical ones, you add a respectable veneer to your persuasion.

Abraham Lincoln used it most famously, of course, in the Gettysburgh Address. He "four score" etc. harnessed the Declaration of Independence to legitimize his acts as a war president.

Pat Buchanan's "four years" reference makes him look like the champ who hung onto his title. But what Republican voters in New Hampshire really wanted in that primary was to send a message. The problem is, they can't for the life of them remember what that message was or who was supposed to receive it.

Yrs,
Figaro

Dear Figaro,

I just found your site and love it! I am about to post on my blog about the phrase "Not for nothing" and its use as a softener or buffer before a strong opinion (much as in using "some guys would" rather than "you should" before uninvited advice.) Is there a name for this buffering device?

Bill Calhoun
http://we-are-all-apes.blogspot.com

Dear Bill,

Are you sure your two examples describe the same rhetorical device? "Not for nothing" is a LITOTES, a figure of understatement that denies the contrary. (I'm not writing this for my health, here.) On the other hand, "some guys would" is a mild form of ARGUMENTUM AD VERECUNDIUM, an argument that appeals to accepted authority. It's a fallacy in formal logic, but very useful in persuasion.

Yes, both set up your argument, putting the rhetorical ball where you can spike it. Many rhetorical tricks serve this purpose. But as far as I know, there's no general term for it.

Yrs,
Fig.