Figures of Speech Served Fresh

Hey Figaro. Bush pulled a very bold piece of rhetorical jujitsu in saying that the comparison of Iraq to Vietnam bolsters his own party's line. While I think the comparison is bogus (as our continued presence in Iraq creates more terrorists than it kills), and I doubt that any number of decades of war waged in Vietnam would've led to some kind of 'success', the speech was interesting and will have historical repercussions.

I'm very interested to hear your take on Bush's move and the speech as a whole, and I'm a little disturbed to see that you haven't written about this maneuver since the speech was made, but you have written about something unrelated. I hope you don't sit this one out; there are a lot of people who will assimilate this speech into their talking points, and it may even change some minds. As one of the most widely read analysts of rhetoric today, your thoughts on this speech should be heard.

Dear R.G.,

Boy, NOW I feel guilty. I've been lecturing my poor wife about Bush's marvelous Iraq-Vietnam rhetoric while ignoring those masses of Figarists eager for my widely read analysis. My only excuse is that I find myself much more witty and insightful with a gin & tonic in my hand, and previous attempts to drink while typing have not been promising. But I'll do my best.

I can't help but think that one of Figaro's rhetorical heroes, Karl Rove, is behind the Viet-Raq gambit. It was Rove, after all, who came up with the brilliant strategy of running on one's weaknesses. If, say, your military record is dubious and your opponent won a medal in Vietnam, accuse your opponent of cowardice. If your policy platform refuses to coddle the weak and the victimized, run as a "compassionate conservative."

If the Democrats did more of this sort of thing, Washington would be a very different place. After all, they have PLENTY of weaknesses to run on. In the general election, if the Democratic nominee attacks the Republican nominee for being soft and weak-kneed--Giuliani would make a great target, because he's anything BUT soft and weak-kneed--then the Democrats will win the election.

So put yourself in Karl Rove's lame-duck shoes. An alarming number of citizens were beginning to call the war a "quagmire." So what do you do? Point out the many obvious differences between the two wars? No! You campaign on your weakness. The LIBERALS lost Vietnam. They made our country turn tail and run, which made Osama bin Laden think we were weak, which was why Al Qaeda attacked us!

Patently absurd as this reasoning is, it can work even if no one completely falls for it. Look what happened with the Swift Boat affair; accusations of cowardice raised a small doubt about John Kerry even in the minds of voters who didn't believe the ads. And in a divided country, a small doubt can make all the difference.

Same thing with Viet-Raq: When voters are divided, and people are rhetorically ignorant, you don't have to win the debate to win the election. You only have to sew doubt in your own weaknesses, and your opponent's strengths.

Advice for Senator Edwards: Start making fun of Hillary's haircuts!

Yrs,
Fig.

Figaro--you rock the house. Love the book title, love the tools, want to have your rhetorical love-child for the correct use of kairos (my next tattoo, add to Ripa's iconographic representation of Rhetorica on my back).

Rhetorica

Dear Rhetorica,
Alas, your love-child kairos is bad. I already have love-children. But do send a picture of that tattoo when you get it. And of the one you already have.

Fig.

dear to kill a mockingbird summer assignment girl,
the first example is hyperbole and the second is metaphor.

ok um i have this summer assinment to read how to kill a mockingbird, then we have to complete this packet of questions.. well i have been in ap english for as long as i can remember but i cant figure these couple out i need help!!!

the answer choices are similes, metaphors, hyperbole, personification, irony.

OK the first question is
.... but jem was a poor example: no tutorial system divised by man could have stopped him form getting at books...
second question is
jem look at me furiously, could not decline, ran down the sidewalk, treaded water at the gate, then dashed in and retieved the tire..

thanx for the help i hope you can answer my questions... :D

Dear D,

Indeed, the answer the Figarist gave above this one is correct.

Fig.

Dear Figaro ,

The Dutch Roman Catholic Bishop Muskens suggested in a recent article that both the names Allah and God should be used by Christians in order to improve relations between Christians and Muslims. The Bishop said that the words God and Allah refer to the same Supreme Being. A hot debate followed in the press.
Can a Rhetor offer a contribution?
I approach you because you have two names yourself: Figaro and Jay Heinrichs.
I approach you because I am a Figarist for ever and ever.

Yours, Arie Vrolijk

Dear Arie,

In rhetorical terms, God is the ultimate Ethos--the worshipers' collective identity. Names and identity are pretty closely intertwined, needless to say. The problem with your Figaro/Jay analogy is that Figaro represents the true identity and Jay represents a fictional persona. Or maybe it's the other way around.

God and Allah, on the other hand, both represent the Supreme Being with two different names. This gets you into all kinds of theological trouble, as the Old Testament Jehovah (a trick name in itself) asserts. The God of the Hebrews shows a great deal of discomfort with his name, in part because it represents the evolving identity of the Jewish tribes.

So what's in a name? Sacred identity, for one thing. And for another: Protestants and Catholics worship the same God and have been killing each other for centuries. Sunnis and Shiites ditto. The Dutch bishop's sentiment is admirable, but it's just that: an admirable sentiment, inshallah.

Fig.

Dear Fig,
Perfect! Genius! (I didn't know if you would actually respond, I feel famous!)
My friend suggested a similar idea actually. But still, coming from you it's got to be gold. (to use a cliche, karios, commonplace...something..)
I think I'm going to go with this article from Time I found on Rudy. It's all about him trying to convince Iowa how much he loves them by wearing a cowboy shirt or some such pathetic nonsense.
Anyway. I'd better get to writing that ASAP! Thank you for your advice.
-Emily
P.S. Thanks to your book I am now spotting logical fallacies and attempts at rhetoric everywhere I look. Ha. Thank YOU for arguing.

Dear Emily,
You're welcome.
Fig.

Dear...Figaro,
I just finished reading your book for a high school English class. (Yes, it was assigned to us to read over the summer). I loved the book and your writing style. But now we've been asked to find a "current event article" that relates to a major theme or chapter of the book and write an essay about how they are related etc. blah blah blah. Do you have any suggestions as to what kind of article I could use for this assignment? I've tried searching for a good political one...but that's not really my field of expertise to begin with. I just thought I would ask the primary source. Let me know if you can help! Thanks.
-Emily

Dear Emily,

By the mere act of writing me, you are already showing enormous rhetorical potential. We're taught self-expression as the epitome of education, but one of the greatest leadership skills is cheat--I mean, getting help from the best sources. And Figaro is the world's greatest expert on Figaro.

Here's a brilliant idea that you can take full credit for, so long as your teacher is vacationing tax-free in Europe and ignoring this site: Evaluate the presidential candidates according to their degree of Ethos, Pathos and Logos. Hillary is all logos all the time; when she tries to use a little pathos, it's pathetic for all the wrong reasons. And her ethos? Well, that's worth examining. Now look at Barack Obama. How's HIS ethos? He certainly has a great backstory. But for a really good time, do the same rhetoric on the Republican candidates. You'll get an A, your teacher will look like a genius, and your school will require my book for decades to come. It's a win-win-win.

Fig.

Where does the phrase "the dog days of August" originate, and what does it mean? My wife and I have a bet on this!

Dear Randy,

That's an easy one: the idiom comes from "dies canicularis," the days of the dog. During midsummer, Sirius, the Dog Star, brightest in the heavens, rises with the sun. The ancients believed that this hot old star actually caused the heat by adding to the sun's. But stars caused everything back then.

Figaro believes the Dog Star's gases cause global warming. Orion has been feeding him too many treats.

Fig.

Dear Figaro,
Karl Rove is leaving the White House. His excuse: I've got to do this for the sake of my family, I also plan to write a book. (Washington Post, August 14.)
‘More time for the family, time to write a book.’ Nobody believes him. These are standard phrases of people who are sacked or people who leave a collapsing organization.
Figaro, is there a name for these lame excuses?

Dear Mr. V,
It's a subspecies of commonplace--the kind used as a face-saving placeholder. What else can the man say? "I'm leaving now because I didn't want to quit under pressure and the president told me I had to quit before Labor Day"? No one has to believe him; he just has to say something, marking time before he publishes his memoir.
Fig.

My wife swaps consonants on words while holding the vowels. She's trying to mind map, but the results are hilarious, as she only remembers the garbled versions. For example,
The surname 'Kibblewhite' becomes 'Piddleright'

What's the figure of speech for that?

Dear Dr. Moriarty,
It's a kind of metathesis (me-TAH-the-sis), which switches letters around. (I don't know of any figure that specifically switches consonants around static vowels, but the metathesis often does that.) Richard Lanham quotes a metathesizing Australian judge: "If I had my way with Germaine Greer's followers, I'd put them all behind bras." Pure sexism, enlightened by a figure.
Fig.

I have been reading about Gwen Shamblin's weight loss programs. According to the Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwen_Shamblin), when she was asked if she was encouraging church members to move closer to her church she said:
"We had 80 members for a long time. We bought that land. And we were building the church at that time. It just grew little by little by little. Then inside the last year, when all of a sudden all these people wanted to move, well, I'm not going to tell them where to live. And I said, Are you sure God is asking you to sell your land? And they would say, We feel God calling us to move. And we want to move. Every time we come down to visit we don't want to leave because we have such a good time."

I am especially interested in the last three sentences "And they would say, We feel God calling us to move. And we want to move. Every time we come down to visit we don't want to leave because we have such a good time."

What is that? I know it has something to do with ethos, but I can't put my finger on what she is doing there.

Thanks always for your ongoing vital and entertaining contribution to the evolution of communication.

Sincerely,
Benjamin Beardsley

Dear Benjamin,

Shamblin is a Christian dieter and author of the Weigh Down Diet. Some people have accused her of running a cult. Why are Shamblin's parishioner/dieters moving to her land? Because, she says, they want to! And who is she to stop them?

While Figaro doesn't know of any specific name for this figure, Shamblin uses an important rhetorical device called EUNOIA. The orator makes her audience believe that she has only their best interests at heart, and that she isn't personally benefiting from what she advocates.

Maybe Figaro should write a diet book. Call it the Figurative Diet: instead of losing weight, you use rhetoric to convince others that you're skinny. At the very least, you'll improve your figures.

Fig.

Barack Obama said: “Look, one thing I’m very confident about is my judgment in foreign policy is, I believe, better than anyone else in this race, Republican or Democrat. And I don’t base that simply on the fact that I was right on the war in Iraq.

I have frequently heard people say we are wrong to be in Iraq, but rarely say what Obama said lastly.

Figuratively and logically, can one be "right" regarding a decision that can never be tested? The decision to go to war effectively destroyed any opportunity to see what might have happened if we had not, hence, one can not be "right" about it.

Am I tilting at windmills?

mstone

Dear m,

Not windmills, maybe, but Aristotle. If you're in pursuit of the absolute truth, then you have to be absolutely right before you can be right. But Aristotle said that in politics, you only have to be PROBABLY right. That's because we base decisions (whom to vote for, whether to ditch Iraq) on probabilities. There is no right or wrong future--only what's most likely to happen.

Far more annoying, Obama says that his judgment is superior not just because he was right on Iraq. He's employing an APOPHASIS, the not-to-mention figure. It pretends to skip over a point while emphasizing it. Whether you were right or wrong with Iraq, Barack, the question is whether you're "right" with what you want to do in Iraq. That's something he can't talk about enough.

Figaro

Working hard or hardly working. Or, One trains minds, the other minds trains. What figure of speech are these examples of?

Dear R,

It's one of Figaro's faves, the ANTISTASIS. It repeats a word while changing its meaning. The antistasis (an-TIS-ta-sis) works especially well if you give it a CHIASMUS spin, making one clause mirror another. Shakespeare liked the device, too: "I wasted time and now time doth waste me."

Or, as a modern college student would say, "I wasted time and then got wasted."

Fig.

Hi Figaro,
I got your book, have just finished reading it, and have enthusiastically recommended it to others, who, like myself, didn't know the rules to the game. Question: is there a difference between the concept of effective persuasion and the idea of manipulating one's audience? Other than the negative connotation of the word "manipulate"?
Donna

Dear Donna,

An excellent and very old question. Manipulation is part of effective persuasion. As Aristotle would say, it's morally neutral. Whether the results are good or evil depends on two factors: the intent of the persuader, and the quality of the audience.

Rhetoricians over the ages have paid too little attention to the audience's educational needs. A rhetorically sophisticated citizenry is less likely to fall for Swift Boating, fear mongering, and money-fueled campaigns. We don't need campaign finance reform. We need gullibility reform. If all citizens were as intelligent and perceptive as you, Donna, and if all orators were as pure-hearted as Figaro, we would have the perfect republic.

There. Didn't that manipulation feel good?

Fig.

Figaro:
I thought you might be interested in an NPR story on the topic of debate. A new movie, "Resolved", is making the film festival rounds and takes a look at the current practice of talking quickly to overwhelm your opponent with points to counter vs. a young man who argues that debate should be about discourse and persuasion.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12096736

John

Dear John,
Thanks for the link. People often ask why I didn't cover high school debate in my book. It's because the debaters talk like auctioneers. It's encouraging to know that a few renegade teens are actually trying to engage their opponents. A few more hundred kids like them, and we may achieve Figaro's dream of a top-rated TV show called "American Orator"!
Fig.

Dear Figaro,

Thank you for an excellent website and book! I have a rhetorical news item for you. It's so simple and obvious that it may be beneath your rhetorical consideration, but I'm struck by how many times I've read/heard it in the past day or so.

I've read at least three articles about Michael Moore's "Sicko" that all say more or less the same thing, along these lines: "Moore wants universal health care. But Moore is a fat, unhealthy slob--folks like him would suck the system dry. Therefore, Moore is wrong."

Isn't this a classic ad hominem attack? That is, the rhetorical uberfallacy (note bound morpheme) that I learned about in 7th grade?

Ty

Dear Ty,

First of all, is "Clever" your middle name? And is your last name "Byhalf"?

To answer your question: Yes, Michael Moore is a fat slob. Oh, wait. That wasn't exactly your question, was it? Calling Mr. Fahrenheit 911 a fat slob is like calling Paris Hilton a self-centered airhead; it's true enough almost to be beyond the realm of ad hominem. Besides, the character attack is perfectly within rhetorical bounds. Much harm, but no foul. (See page 157 of Figaro's book.)

But the Moore attack does qualify as a far more interesting logical foul called the Red Herring, aka the "Look! a bird!" fallacy. Its purpose is simply to distract, because it's irrelevant to the issue at hand.

If Moore got fit, would his accusers then support universal health care? Give that man a Stairmaster, stat! But exactly which "people like him" are opponents referring to? Right-wing fat slobs, too?

Moore's opponents may think they're accusing him of hypocrisy. But Moore's a hypocrite in this sense only if "Sicko" advocates health. It doesn't. It advocates health CARE.

Al Gore, on the other hand, is a hypocrite, because he fails to live like a Hobbit.

Fig.

Hello Figaro,

A commander in Baghdad reported more fighting in June this year. "We're winning. They wouldn't be fighting if we weren't winning. They wouldn't have a reason to," said Lt. Col. Ralph Kauzlarich, the battalion commander. "It's a measure of effectiveness." Washington Post July 9 2007.
Figaro, I have some doubts about the reasoning process of the colonel. Do you agree?

Yours,

Arie Vrolijk

Dear Arie,

Break it down into a boring old syllogism:

The insurgents are fighting more.
People only fight when they're losing.
The insurgents must be losing.

Makes sense to us! Of course, you may object to the middle proposition. Figaro is no military historian, but he can't think of many wars in which the winners stopped fighting before they actually won.

Besides, we were told that the reason for sending additional troops to Iraq was to REDUCE the level of violence. Supporters of the Surge, including Dick Cheney and, um, other people, will say that this syllogism holds up, because the violence is the death rattle of a few dead-enders. But declaring lack of success as a measure of success constitutes a rhetorical device all its own: doublespeak.

Fig.

Hi Fig,
My sister, a college classmate of yours, recommended I ask you about the rhetorical device of attaching a suffix to a word or word fragment to associate it with a familiar incident, condition, etc. The ones I can think of are: "-gate", from Watergate, to denote a scandal (ie. Nannygate, Contragate, fajitagate) and "-holic", from alcoholic, to denote addiction (ie. chocoholic, workaholic). Is there a name for these and can you think of any others?
Thanks very much,
Doug

Dear Doug,

Your sister was our college classmate? As an alumnaholic, we're curious. She must be brilliant. because we can indeed answer your question. The name for those gates and holics is BOUND MORPHEME,

A morpheme is language’s version of an atom, a building block of meaning. A bound morpheme is affixed to a word to change its meaning. Hence Irangate, Monicagate, and shopaholic.

Want more? First a warning: a morpheme can be addictive. See http://specgram.com/LP/26.coma.morpheme.html. Still want to see more?

“Tron”: you got your electron, your cyclotron, and your robot-like waitron (called “server” in finer restaurants).
“Ize”: energize, idionize, idolize
“Uber”: replaces “super” or “ultra” for far more annoying effect
“Athon”: walkathon, eatathon, shopathon

Now, did you really mean it when you wrote in a separate email that you'd buy copies of "Thank You for Arguing" for every family member if Figaro could answer your question? Well, we think that's just uber!

Fig.

Dear Figaro,

A few weeks ago Pam asked about a term for a word that occurs once in the Bible (or once in the Old Testament or New Testament. The term is "hapax legomenon," from the Greek meaning "(something) said only once."

CJ

Dear CJ,

Thank the god Occasio for my procrastinational abilities, and for such a scholarly Figarist as you. Bless you.

Fig.