We Fondly Hope to Manipulate You.

Quote: “Unspeak.”  Title of a new book by Stephen Poole.

Figure of Speech: neologism, the new word.  The word itself is a synonym for commonplace, a label crafted out of boiled-down public opinion.

Here’s yet another book bemoaning the decline of our language and the conning of us poor sops, the citizenry.  Poole’s book describes a kind of word that’s used as a “weapon,” such as pro-choice, pro-life, or reform. These terms gag debate, he says. Utter hooey, says Figaro.  They only work if we let them.

The book’s title actually employs the same device Poole denounces.  Using our belief in unfettered speech, he applies a shocking label — unspeak — to the practice of labeling.

What Poole claims to be a new phenomenon is at least 2,500 years old. Aristotle called it a “commonplace,” a term or phrase based on the audience’s own beliefs, values and naked self-interest.  Tax relief and tax burden, for example, are excellent commonplace labels.  Poole thinks they’re bad, because they prevent pro-tax arguments.  But what sane politician would promote a tax for the sake of taxes?  Better to emphasize the need for “fairness.” This, too, is a commonplace label — the building block of deliberative debate.

But labels are manipulative!  Indeed they are.  Still, rhetorical manipulation requires a subtle understanding of public opinion.  What’s the alternative:  Telling it like it is?  Sticking to our guns?  We already have a president who does that.

Besides, Figaro loves rhetoric’s refreshing lack of rules.  Rhetoric says to humanity, Don’t ever change, you’re beautiful.  Any sort of discourse that required reforming humans, as Poole proposes, would turn Figaro into a survivalist.   We don’t want to buy the world a Coke and live in perfect harmony; harmony means unanimity, and history shows that unanimity is a scary thing.

Snappy Answer:  “That goes without saying.”

Timing Is Everything.

Quote:  “Hi, I’m Art Buchwald and I just died!”  Humorist Art Buchwald, who just died.

Figure of Speech: kairos (KIE-ros), rhetorical mastery of the occasion.  From the Greek, meaning “occasion.”

Kairos, the art of seizing the moment and the medium, was so important in ancient times that the Romans made it into a god:  Occasio, a beautiful young man who was bald in the back of his head.   He symbolized how fast an opportunity can age.  (Hence the old saying, “Fortune is bald behind.”)

Kairos is also the secret to comedy.  Art Buchwald, whose syndicated column appeared in 400 newspapers three days a week for decades, saw a ripe opportunity in his own impending death.  His last book has a title rich in kairos:  Too Soon to Say Goodbye.  And he did a video with the New York Times in which he cheerfully announced his own recent death at age 81.  Video provides the perfect medium for making a kairos joke, because it lets you reverse time and fast-forward it.  In Buchwald’s case, he hit a permanent pause.

Snappy Answer:  “No, you didn’t.”

All in All, Quite Uplifting.

Quote:   “If the Oscars are the senior prom, the Golden Globes are a Spring Break kegger.”  Washington Post.

Figure of Speech:  metaphorical analogy, the comparison of representational imagery.  Often a form of hyperbole.

The Golden Globes ceremony took place last night, allowing movie aristocrats to go slumming with the TV proles.  The Post describes the occasion in a metaphorically rich if-then analogy.  It’s great for topping one funny image with another for maximum hyperbolic effect.

The awardees themselves were not so amusingly rhetorical.  Helen Mirren (“Elizabeth I” and The Queen) and Hugh Laurie (“House”) gave the best aporial anti-speeches.   Mirren:  “Elizabeth the First would have an amazing speech.  I have nothing to say except thank you very much.”  Laurie:  “I am speechless.  I am literally without a speech.”  (We made up the term “aporial,” but it’s a useful anthimeria.)

Figaro loved them nonetheless.   Forgive his salacious figuring, but he thinks that in surgery-enhanced Hollywood, the very name “Golden Globes” makes a super metonymy.

Snappy Answer:  “And just made for the boob tube.”

We Sincerely Hope This Offends You

You might enjoy this exchange from Ask Figaro:

Dear Figaro,
I ran into an acquaintance I hadn’t seen in a few weeks and asked him how he enjoyed the holidays. He got red in the face and growled, “You mean CHRISTMAS? All this politically correct crap is ruining this country.”
Leaving aside that “the holidays” originally meant “holy days,” does “political correctness” represent some figure of speech?
Correctly Yours,
Kairoticact

Dear ‘Rotica,

These days, people get easily offended by how easily offended people get these days.  This amuses Figaro greatly. But your choleric acquaintance did indeed use a figure.  “Politically correct” constitutes a PARADOX — a pair of conflicting truths.  (The term comes from the Greek, meaning “against common belief or opinion.”) 

The words “political” and “correct” are like snake oil and water.  To enforce a “correct” way of thinking smacks of George Orwell and Stalin.  Of course, people who insist on “Christmas” instead of “holidays” are themselves enforcing a correct way of political thinking.  Which makes the Christmasists paragons of political correctness.

Figaro, on the other hand, hopes that everyone had a Merry Holiday.

Yrs,
Fig.

The Mayor Talks Tough

Quote:  “We are drawing a line in the sand, saying enough is enough.”  New Orleans Governor Ray Nagin, quoted in Time.

Figure of Speech: ploce, the braided figure.  From the Greek, meaning “plaiting.”  (Here’s another example.)

Crime is getting out of hand in the Big Easy, with nine murders in eight days.   So the shoot-from-the-hip mayor declares a crackdown with a ploce, a figure that repeats a word while weaving a few other words between.  The repeated word changes meaning or emphasis as it winds through the sentence.

Our favorite ploce comes in The Deer Hunter, when the cabdriver Merle says, “This is this, Vince.  It isn’t something else.  This is this!”  It’s one of the great movie lines of all time.

And that is that.

Snappy Answer:  “Which, Figaro predicts, won’t be enough.”

“Surge.” It’s Positively Electrifying.

Quote:  [The word surge] “falls into the Orwellian zone between language and politics.”  Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, speaking to the Washington Post.

Figure of Speech:  eponym (EH-po-nym), a word made from a person’s name. From the Greek, meaning “upon a name.”

Once again the Republicans show their mastery of rhetoric, and the media show their ignorance.  The Democrats label the president’s plan to add 20,000 troops to Iraq “escalation,” recalling the Vietnam quagmire.  Not bad, but not sexy either, and it’s hard to work into a headline.  “Surge” is much better.  It’s little.  New.  Different.  And inside that tiny word-capsule is an argument:  We’ll roll over the enemy, and then we’ll roll back.

Should the media adopt such a rhetorically rich word?  Since they don’t know what rhetoric even is, the argument hardly comes up.  Credit media think-tanker Tom Rosenstiel for trying, at least.  He gropes for a rhetorical term and comes up with the eponym “Orwellian” — derived, of course, from the writer George Orwell, whose fictional dictators ruled through euphemism.

But “surge” isn’t Orwellian, or even euphemistic.  Nobody is being brainwashed here.  Nor is the zone between language and politics Orwellian.  It’s rhetorical.  Then again, dear Figarist, you already knew that.

Snappy Answer:  “And the media increasingly fall into the O’Reillyan zone between politics and gossip.”