The Four Most Dangerous Figures

Quote:  “Partly by happenstance, the case brought the metaphor of terrorism as a war into an American courtroom.”  Reporter Adam Liptak on Attorney General nominee Michael B. Mukasey, in the New York Times.

Figure of Speech:  metaphor, the sleight-of-tongue trope.

Figaro has been thinking a lot about tropes lately, partly because he loves them, and partly because they’re bollixing this country to a fare-thee-well. Tropes are figures that make us see things differently.   They’re essential to humans’ understanding of the world, and it’s no exaggeration to say that civilization would be impossible without them.  But tropes can turn evil when we take them literally.  Rhetoric recognizes four big ones:

Metaphor.  This trope transforms something into something else.  Life is a bowl of cherries.  I’m getting out of the rat race.  Few people would mistake their lives for fruit and competitive rodents, but some metaphors are harder to distinguish from reality.  Take the war on terror.   Some people prefer disease to war as their metaphor of choice:  Terror is a cancer in society.  That’s a great metaphor, and even a useful one — until you take it literally.  Mistaking terrorism for a medical ailment leads us down weird curative paths. But terrorism isn’t war, either. Americans’ first instinct in time of war is to sic the armed forces against the enemy, bomb the hell out of it, then give the loser a consolation prize of billions in restoration funds.  But how do we do that against terrorists?  When we take the war metaphor seriously, it’s hard to resist declaring another country a “terrorist state.”  That gives us something to bomb and restore — an army to attack and defeat, a dictator to depose, and an economy to prop up.  Iraq fit the metaphorical description perfectly.  And so, before we had finished clearing out the actual nest of terrorists in Afghanistan, we attacked a metaphor.

Irony.  Ah, irony.  It  says one thing while meaning the opposite.  Oh, great, another assignment — thanks a million. Figaro loves irony with unironic ardor. As his book says (chapter 19, “The Mother in Law Ruse” ), you can use irony as a code to bring a group together.  Irony is especially cool when you and your posse are in a crowd of people who don’t get it.  Only you few have the secret trope decoder ring!

But what if your group lacks the decoder?  Jon Stewart’s TV show is the number-one source of news for Americans under age 25.  Yet Stewart is a comedian posing as a journalist. He’s on the Comedy Channel, for crying out loud. So the rising generation of citizens keeps current with a daily dose of irony.  Figaro is just thrilled with what that portends for our republic.

Synecdoche (sin-EC-doe-kee). This scale-changing trope takes a part of something and makes it represent the whole, or it takes a species and makes it stand for the whole genus.  (It works the other way around, too.)  All hands on deck.  I am the law.  The welfare mother.  The synecdoche turns sour when it makes a single individual represents an entire class of citizens.  The Pentagon tried to make Jessica Lynch stand for all brave soldiers with  a story about her that was mostly untrue.  Yes, the real problem is here is lying, not figures. But the synecdoche can lead to a fallacy: one anecdote does not a reality make.

Metonymy (meh-TON-o-mee). The trickiest of tropes, the metonymy takes a quality or aspect of something and makes it stand for the whole shebang.  The White House.  The Crown.  Bluehairs.  It’s the stem cell of figures; take the rhetorical DNA from a thatch of dyed hair, and ZAP! A whole gang of elderly women!  While bluehairs might not appreciate the label, it’s hard to see the metonymy as something evil (unless you’re trying to pronounce it).

As with the other tropes, however, beware of following the metonymy off a figurative cliff.  Take money in politics, for instance.  Without thinking, we make dollars represent a whole host of political baddies — special-interest donors, crooked fundraisers, elected officials forced into fulltime fundraising. Whole campaigns hinge on who raises the most. 

But money doesn’t actually buy elections; Figaro, at least, has yet to be handed a check before he enters a polling booth.  Money buys advertising, not votes, and then we citizens do the rest.  Through the magic of tropes, money transmogrifies from a fistful of Benjamins (that’s a metonymy too!) into an electorate drooling mindlessly at its collective TV set (synecdoche!).  Which explains why campaign finance “reform” fails to reform politics.

And you thought figures were just figures.

Super Kindergarten Rhetoric!

The latest question from Ask Figaro:

Fig,

General Petraeus…General Betray-us. What think ye of this as a declaration and is it a form of argument?

M Stone

Dear Geode-like One,

“Betray Us” constitutes a figure of speech called paronomasia, a near-pun. It plays on words that sound or mean the same but aren’t identical. The paronomasia is great for labeling an opponent, provided that your opponent is under the age of six. In the context of the most talented general to come along in a decade, the figure — used in a New York Times ad by the group MoveOn.org — comes off as clumsy and, dare we say it, illiberal…. [more]

Update on Tuesday, September 18, 2007 at 12:21PM by Figaro

In the comments to this posting, Mark asked a question that made Figaro think a little harder about that cruel-play-on-somebody’s-name thing.  I’ll stand by my paronomasia, but you might better call it an ADNOMINATIO.  See the “Ask Figaro” section for details.

 The wise Figarist might ask: Who cares?  What’s interesting to us isn’t the name of these techniques, necessarily, but the techniques themselves.  Figures show us a delightful variety of ways to ruin someone’s self-esteem and make people associate him with an embarrassing or evil attribute.  You can find words that sound like the person’s name, or play off the literal meaning of the term (“Bush” is a fine example), or assign a new, belittling name, or assign an opposite name that only highlights their flaw (calling a bald Stooge “Curly”), or use a descriptive phrase instead of the proper noun (“She Who Must Be Obeyed,” “He Who Must Not Be Named”), and so on and so on.

 It’s a big, beautiful, humiliating figurative world out there.

 Fig.

Master of the Dark Art

Quote:  “I would engage in some form of syntax destruction which sounded as though I were answering the question, but in fact, had not.”  Alan Greenspan, in an interview with 60 Minutes.

Figure of Speech:  skotison (SKO-tih-son), the figure of ultimate darkness.  From the Greek, meaning “darken it.”

Former Federal Reserve Chairman and Treasury Secretary Alan Greenspan’s memoir is causing a minor tsunami in Washington.  The self-described “libertarian conservative” ranks Clinton’s presidency above George W. Bush’s and declares that the Iraq war is “largely about oil.”  But what’s really bouncing Beltway eyebrows is the book’s language:  it’s  clear and comprehensible!  This is the man who said, only half-kidding, “I’ve been able to string more words into fewer ideas than anybody I know.”

Greenspan didn’t invent the technique, of course.  The ancient historian Livy described a rhetorician who would tell his students, “Darken it!”  The Greek version, skotison, makes a fitting figure for academics and bureaucrats who swap obscurity for erudition.  (The figure isn’t Figaro’s idea. He got it straight from Richard Lanham.)

Greenspan’s skotisonical mastery wasn’t such a bad thing.  Speaking clearly could cause international markets to tumble; his impenetrable language gave people confidence that this high priest of monetary policy had a personal relationship with Mammon — solid proof that the rhetorical dark arts can be used for good.

Snappy Answer:   To quote the immortal Homer, “No function beer well without.”

Smells Almost Like Victory!

Quote:  “The principle guiding my decisions on troop levels in Iraq is ‘return on success.’” President Bush, speaking to the nation.

Figure of Speech: catachresis (cat-a-KREE-sis), the metaphor gone wild. From the Greek, meaning “misuse.”

Our goal in Iraq is no longer victory; the president didn’t use the word once last night.  The goal now seems to be “success” (that word came up ten times). Frankly, that sounds to Figaro like second prize.  But wait!  Success isn’t really the prize at all.  Un-surging Iraq will be a return on a successful investment.  Our reward for sticking it out is a withdrawal to troop levels only slightly above last year’s.

Bush pulls off a rhetorical flip with a wildly inappropriate metaphor that turns an inevitable withdrawal into a bonus.  We could use the same figure, called a catachresis, to transform the receding flood waters in New Orleans into a “return on success.”  Heckuva rhetorical job, Mr. President!

Snappy Answer:  “Is ‘return’ a pun?”

Take Orally. May Cause Side Effects.

From a recent question in Ask Figaro:

Dear Figaro—I teach a Digital Rhetoric course (and, naturally, I introduce the topic of rhetoric through your book). I’d like to hear from you about where you think that rhetoric is headed given the technological advances and the many new media available to us for rhetoric? Do the internet, TV and cell phones (“smart phones”) lead us toward orality again and away from a literate culture? What are your thoughts?
Dr. Sig

Dear Doc,

Let’s look at the facts. Newspaper and magazine readerships are down. In 1995, the average American read at least the beginning of 10 books; the number has shrunk to 4 today, with more than a third of adults reading no books at all. Our political debates are conducted orally, through sound bites, ad campaigns, and televised debates. Business decisions get made orally, through PowerPoint presentations, teleconferencing, and face-to-face meetings. Yes, we do have emails, and blogs like this one, but as I argue in my book, those media count as quasi-oral. (See chapter 22, “The Jumbotron Blunder.”)

Figaro isn’t thrilled about the trend. He’s hawking a book for one thing. Plus, we lose the depth of thought that reading enables. Good or bad, though, it’s reality: we have already switched from a written to an oral society. Schools and colleges must follow your fine example and foster oral sophistication through the teaching of rhetoric.

But then, anachronism is one of the many charms of the liberal arts. During the American Revolution, pamphlets and newspapers led the charge; yet colleges still taught as if the printing press hadn’t been invented.

So give them time. They’ll catch on in a century or so.

Fig.

I’m Not an Actor But I Played One on TV

Quote:  “He’s done a pretty good job of playing my part on Law & Order.”  Former prosecutor and New York Mayor Rudy Guiliani, speaking of fellow presidential candidate Fred Thompson at the Republican debate in Manchester, New Hampshire.

Figure of Speech:  adianoeta (ah-dee-ah-no-EE-ta), the figure of hidden meaning.  From the Greek, meaning “unintelligible.”

Oh, snap! This is our favorite political adianoeta yet.  A form of irony, the figure contains an obvious meaning and a hidden one beneath it.

Actually, we preferred Giuliani’s dig earlier in the debate, when he speculated on why Thompson, a notoriously laid-back Senator-turned-actor, had failed to show.  “Maybe we’re up past his bedtime,” said Rudy. The ex-mayor is trying his darndest to look more statesmanlike than a flip-the-bird New Yorker; and he’s failing delightfully.

Snappy Answer:  “So he’s just an actor.  Like Ronald Reagan.”