She Said Magma

No wonder we suddenly feel the need to focus on the scientific and mystical significance of wind patterns, magma, and dust.

Anne Applebaum in Slate

Merism (MER-ism), the 24-7 figure.

That volcano in Iceland could keep spewing filth and hot gases for some time to come. Eyjafjallajokull (Figaro pronounces it “Glenn Beck”) could attack Europe’s whole political economy.

 The Poulet Petit scenario earns a dramatic merism, a figure that describes a whole by summing up its parts. “I worked 24-7 on that proposal.” “He talked from dawn till dusk.”

Applebaum could simply have focused on “the scientific and mystical significance of volcanoes.” Instead, she gives us the whole sturm und drang.

Figaro loves the whole rhetorical lock, stock and crater.

The Genuine Article

FROM ASK FIGARO: WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE IN MEANING BETWEEN “EATING AT TABLE” AND “EATING AT THE TABLE”? - Mary

The seemingly modest article “the” actually leads an exciting life. Imagine if you killed the “at” in front of “eating at the table”: you’d be witness to an act of xylophagy!

Putting “the” in front of a word specifies the object. You’re not just talking about any table here. We’re talking about THE table. (Figaro once stayed at a hotel called “The Hotel” in Vegas. He pronounced it “Thuh Hotel” at the front desk and they almost threw him out.)

Eating “at table,” on the other hand, has a snobbish, Anglophile feel to it.  It implies an un-American style of eating with a knife and fork.  One certainly does not eat one’s McDonald’s Happy Meal “at table,” does one?

So next time you’re at table, pull up a “the” before chowing down.

Shoot First!

You know that’s kinda like getting out there on the playground, a bunch of kids ready to fight and one of the kids saying ‘Go ahead, punch me in the face and I’m not going to retaliate. Go ahead and do what you want to with me.’

Playground bully Sarah Palin, referring to the White House’s
promise not to launch nukes against non-nuke nations

catachresis (cat-a-KREE-sis), the metaphor gone rogue. From the Greek, meaning “bad use.” See more examples here and  here and  here.

Whenever you hear a simile begin with “That’s kinda like,” turn your rhetoric sensors on. You may be entering a catachresis—a kinda-like Wonderland where global nukes shrink to the size of toddler fisticuffs.

The catachresis creates an alternative tribal reality. If you’re in the tribe, it’s a believable reality. Go, Sarah! Tell it (kinda) like it is! If you’re outside the tribe, then you wonder what drug the speaker is taking. That drug is tribalism,  America’s new LSD. If you’re my kinda American, you’re into my kinda reality.

So what’s the antidote? Figaro prefers the totally excellent Wayne’s World Defense. Just say “NOT!”

Nuclear restraint is kinda like getting out there on the playground…NOT.

Brewmasturbatory

To the dismay of the Austrian town of Fucking, the European Union trademark authority has granted a German company the right to patent a beer called “Fucking Hell.” 

Slate

cacosyntheton (cah-co-SIN-the-ton), the nasty combiner. From the Greek, meaning “badly made.”

As every beer aficionado knows, a Hell is a kind of light ale. As every EuroRail-riding sign-stealer knows, Fucking is a small town in Austria—which, by the way, lacks a brewery.

The German company who won the patent for Fucking Hell hopes to bank on a nifty cacosyntheton, a figure that combines nasty sounds, whether they mean anything or not. For instance, the brewers might consider putting a little Tabasco sauce in their ale to produce a Bloody Hell.

Down the hatch!

Go Ahead. Make My Amendment.

I’ve looked down
barrels of guns.

Rep. Bart Stupack (D-MI), when asked if death threats concerned him, in Politico.

metonymy (meh-TON-y-my), the scale-changing figure.  From the Greek, meaning “name change.”

Jeez, calm down, people. It’s a health care bill, for crying out loud. A deflated, tweaked, compromised, new abortion-free formula health care bill, not the apocalypse. Yet the increasingly misnamed Tea Partiers have been calling in death threats and calling for revolution.

Bart Stupack, the anti-abortion holdout who switched sides at the last minute, shrugs rhetorically with a commonplace metonymy. The trope takes an aspect of something and makes it stand for the whole thing. (See other examples here and here and here.) Stupack, an ex-cop, could simply have said, “I’ve had bad guys point guns at me.” Instead, he makes a gun appear before our very eyes. The Greeks called this kind of immediacy enargeia. It’s the special effects of rhetoric.

If only it could make those Tea Totalitarians disappear.

What’s a Natoma Worth?

 If in this job I can save one life, one family, one person, one Natoma, this job is worth it.

Rep. John Boccieri (D-OH),
explaining his decision to vote for the health care bill.

anaphora (an AH for ah), the first-word repeater. From the Greek, meaning “carrying back.” Also synecdoche (sin-EK-doe-kee), the generalizing trope.

Natoma Canfield, an Ohio cleaning woman, can’t afford health insurance since her current insurer jacked up her rates. And she can’t switch to a new policy because of  a pre-existing condition. President Obama flew to see her—and to convince wavering Democrat John Boccieri, who just happened to represent Canfield’s district.

Boccieri uses an anaphora—repeating the first word of successive phrases or clauses—to  explain his anecdote-based decision. Often employed to express politically useful emotion, the figure shows he cares for every single blessed constituent. Thus he polishes his disinterest—one of the three characteristics of a healthy ethos (the other two being virtue and practical wisdom). Why, he’d sacrifice his job if it saved just one life!

He might have organized his phrases better, starting with “family” and then listing “person,” “life,” and “Natoma.” But we’ll give him credit nonetheless. Plus he gets a bonus for throwing in a synecdoche, making a Natoma the currency of insured people.

Of course, it would be rather difficult to prove whether anyone’s life will be saved by one congressman’s vote. But health care lies in the realm of rhetoric. Certainly not logic.