Since no one managed (or bothered) to guess yesterday's figure, it was "Accumulatio": saying the same thing in other words, repetition with variation, redundant meaning in novel clothing....
You get the idea.
My picture of Accumulatio is a small pile of dollar bills next to a larger pile of quarters next to an even larger pile of pennies; each pile is the same amount of money, but in different currency. Behind the three piles stands a magician in the traditional cone hat to remind me that another name for Accumulatio is Congeries (like "conjuries").
I forgot to mention that I hope to provide an imaginary picture for each of the figures of speech as we go along. That way I can use the loci mnemonic to remember all the figure and their names.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Persecution
Ever since I began my crusade against the insidious Ray Moose, I have had no peace. His spies call my telephone, pretending to offer me a credit card, and say that they "just need to verify your address."
Sure. As though I'd tell them where I live.
I traveled far away to give a lecture in a town where no one should have known me, and mounted on the wall in the lecture hall was--I am not making this up--a Moose head!
It watched me the whole time. And listened.
Just tonight I had a close call in the sanctuary of my own home. My wife prepared a special dessert to cap off a week of celebrating Easter, a sumptuous something to bring joy to the heart and sugar to the blood. I anticipated the moment all day, until she told me what it was:
Chocolate Moose.
I was stunned; I was speechless; my mouth sagged open; I was breathless, I said not a word. In my own home!
Fortunately my wife hastened to show me her recipe book, and I saw my mistake. I am a typical American and ignorant of foreign words. The name of the dish is clearly chocolate mouse, however the French pronounce it.
Sure. As though I'd tell them where I live.
I traveled far away to give a lecture in a town where no one should have known me, and mounted on the wall in the lecture hall was--I am not making this up--a Moose head!
It watched me the whole time. And listened.
Just tonight I had a close call in the sanctuary of my own home. My wife prepared a special dessert to cap off a week of celebrating Easter, a sumptuous something to bring joy to the heart and sugar to the blood. I anticipated the moment all day, until she told me what it was:
Chocolate Moose.
I was stunned; I was speechless; my mouth sagged open; I was breathless, I said not a word. In my own home!
Fortunately my wife hastened to show me her recipe book, and I saw my mistake. I am a typical American and ignorant of foreign words. The name of the dish is clearly chocolate mouse, however the French pronounce it.
"Figures" of Speech
As you may (or may not) have noticed, the Ignoramus Blog is back, for a time at least. As random as the forthcoming posts may seem, I am on a mission.
One of my favorite stimuli to writing is Arthur Quinn's Figures of Speech: 60 Ways to Turn a Phrase. The thought has long possessed me of working through all 60 figures of speech Quinn lists as a kind of exercise, a rhetorical workout.
This idea gained strength recently when I realized how deeply Ray Moose hates words. That's right: he hates them. As much as he can turn them to his advantage, as much as words can make lies as well as truth, the word itself is abominable to the Moose man. He would much rather we look at pictures.
Animals live in a world of sound, smell, and picture, steeped in the sensory. That's all to the good, but that's all there is to it. Humans, without leaving behind the sounds, the smells, and the pictures, go on to interpret their sensations by putting them into words. While a picture may be "worth a thousand words" in terms of conveying details, a picture with no word to give context isn't worth a damn. A wordless animal does not get anything from pictures.
We often hear this put as a limitation or even a defect: There is no such thing as a neutral description; no author is strictly speaking objective; every text has its bias. But suchlike laments read language backward: it is the glory of man that he rises above the sensory to interpret the sheer physical datum by his words.
In a sentence, then: words are from thought, while pictures are from the eyeball.
Ray would rather we did not think. He would like us all at the level of animals, sheep to be specific, steeped in sensation and oblivious to ideas. Ideas are the most powerful force in the cosmos, and Ray would just as soon have all the power in his own hands. So he bombards us with sensations--mega sounds, artificial flavors, manufactured smells, special effects--and most especially with pictures, since for us sight is the strongest and most arresting of the senses.
Ray's greatest victory has been our transition from a print-based culture to a TV-based culture. Whereas Americans once found all their knowledge in books and newspapers and pamphlets, now everything, absolutely everything, is conveyed by way of the TV. And the TV trains the brain to let go thought and submit to the endlessly stimulating pictures. At the end of the day you just can't eradicate words from human culture, since even TVs require words to govern their making, but you have to give Ray credit for having succeeded beyond what anyone would ever have thought possible. If you want to ignore Ray Moose, start by turning off the TV.
So my self imposed rhetorical bootcamp is inherently anti-Moose. I intend to work through the glossary at the back of Quinn's book, using each figure of speech according to its definition.
I begin with the first entry, "Abusio," also known as "Catachresis." This is the substitution of one word for another seemingly in order to use a word contrary to its meaning. For example, in my last post I referred to "slothful speed." Sloth is associated with slowness, so my point about the speed--that it was made possible by a lazy inattention to detail--was made more strikingly by a seemingly inappropriate word choice. Similarly, I believe Shakespeare refers somewhere to "blind mouths."
In my imagination, Abusio is a doleful four-year-old child, covered with bruises and welts to show how harshly the poor word has been treated; his clothes are oversized, indicating that he has been put in place of some other word that perhaps was more natural for this situation; he holds in his hands a copy of the Catechism, to remind me that his other name is "Catachresis."
Such an extreme figure for our first exercise! But Abusio highlights the true nature of the rhetorical figure: it is appropriately inappropriate. Once you have submitted to a language and its conventions, once you have learned where the boundaries are, then you can master it, and transgress for effect.
Your challenge: Can you spot the rhetorical figure of the day in each day's post? Let me know in the combox if you spot it.
One of my favorite stimuli to writing is Arthur Quinn's Figures of Speech: 60 Ways to Turn a Phrase. The thought has long possessed me of working through all 60 figures of speech Quinn lists as a kind of exercise, a rhetorical workout.
This idea gained strength recently when I realized how deeply Ray Moose hates words. That's right: he hates them. As much as he can turn them to his advantage, as much as words can make lies as well as truth, the word itself is abominable to the Moose man. He would much rather we look at pictures.
Animals live in a world of sound, smell, and picture, steeped in the sensory. That's all to the good, but that's all there is to it. Humans, without leaving behind the sounds, the smells, and the pictures, go on to interpret their sensations by putting them into words. While a picture may be "worth a thousand words" in terms of conveying details, a picture with no word to give context isn't worth a damn. A wordless animal does not get anything from pictures.
We often hear this put as a limitation or even a defect: There is no such thing as a neutral description; no author is strictly speaking objective; every text has its bias. But suchlike laments read language backward: it is the glory of man that he rises above the sensory to interpret the sheer physical datum by his words.
In a sentence, then: words are from thought, while pictures are from the eyeball.
Ray would rather we did not think. He would like us all at the level of animals, sheep to be specific, steeped in sensation and oblivious to ideas. Ideas are the most powerful force in the cosmos, and Ray would just as soon have all the power in his own hands. So he bombards us with sensations--mega sounds, artificial flavors, manufactured smells, special effects--and most especially with pictures, since for us sight is the strongest and most arresting of the senses.
Ray's greatest victory has been our transition from a print-based culture to a TV-based culture. Whereas Americans once found all their knowledge in books and newspapers and pamphlets, now everything, absolutely everything, is conveyed by way of the TV. And the TV trains the brain to let go thought and submit to the endlessly stimulating pictures. At the end of the day you just can't eradicate words from human culture, since even TVs require words to govern their making, but you have to give Ray credit for having succeeded beyond what anyone would ever have thought possible. If you want to ignore Ray Moose, start by turning off the TV.
So my self imposed rhetorical bootcamp is inherently anti-Moose. I intend to work through the glossary at the back of Quinn's book, using each figure of speech according to its definition.
I begin with the first entry, "Abusio," also known as "Catachresis." This is the substitution of one word for another seemingly in order to use a word contrary to its meaning. For example, in my last post I referred to "slothful speed." Sloth is associated with slowness, so my point about the speed--that it was made possible by a lazy inattention to detail--was made more strikingly by a seemingly inappropriate word choice. Similarly, I believe Shakespeare refers somewhere to "blind mouths."
In my imagination, Abusio is a doleful four-year-old child, covered with bruises and welts to show how harshly the poor word has been treated; his clothes are oversized, indicating that he has been put in place of some other word that perhaps was more natural for this situation; he holds in his hands a copy of the Catechism, to remind me that his other name is "Catachresis."
Such an extreme figure for our first exercise! But Abusio highlights the true nature of the rhetorical figure: it is appropriately inappropriate. Once you have submitted to a language and its conventions, once you have learned where the boundaries are, then you can master it, and transgress for effect.
Your challenge: Can you spot the rhetorical figure of the day in each day's post? Let me know in the combox if you spot it.
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Polluting the News
Most of the time I'm OK with the fact that Ray Moose runs the mass media. Then, once in a while, silliness exceeds all bounds of excess and I compulsively...blog.
It started innocently enough. Monsignor Gianfranco Girotti, a Vatican official, gave an interview with L'Osservatore Romano in which he was asked what "new" sins we have to deal with today. He commented on the effects of globalization, and remarked that the capital sins have found new ways to manifest themselves; for example, gluttony comes out as pollution.
But with slothful speed, "capital" sins became "deadly" sins, which then morphed into "mortal" sins, and the headline read: "Pollution and drugs are on a list of new mortal sins produced by the Vatican." Now is that a list produced by the Vatican of new mortal sins, or is it a list of "new mortal sins produced by the Vatican"?
As the situation deteriorated, reporters tried their hand at theology by introducing a distinction between "mortal" and "deadly", as in the the following "news" article:
It started innocently enough. Monsignor Gianfranco Girotti, a Vatican official, gave an interview with L'Osservatore Romano in which he was asked what "new" sins we have to deal with today. He commented on the effects of globalization, and remarked that the capital sins have found new ways to manifest themselves; for example, gluttony comes out as pollution.
But with slothful speed, "capital" sins became "deadly" sins, which then morphed into "mortal" sins, and the headline read: "Pollution and drugs are on a list of new mortal sins produced by the Vatican." Now is that a list produced by the Vatican of new mortal sins, or is it a list of "new mortal sins produced by the Vatican"?
As the situation deteriorated, reporters tried their hand at theology by introducing a distinction between "mortal" and "deadly", as in the the following "news" article:
There are now seven “mortal” sins added by the Vatican to be placed alongside the traditional seven deadly sins: envy, pride, gluttony, lust, hate, greed, sloth, and envy. These new sins are deemed to be more apparent in today’s world.By the time it trickled through to treehugger.com, a bold-printed headline blared "The Vatican Declares Pollution One of the Most Deadly Modern Sins," and the article sanguinely remarked that
“Thou shall not pollute the Earth. Thou shall beware genetic manipulation. Thou shalt not carry out morally dubious scientific experiments" might soon be incorporated in the Ten Commandments.Depressing, I know. But perhaps there is a homiletic chance in all the hullabaloo. The idea that greed and gluttony now show themselves in corporate waste dumping is certainly right; pollution is a sin. But in a talk given in 1989, John Paul II turned the whole idea on its head. Sin, he argued, is a pollution:
I am sure that, like almost all young people of today, you are worried about air and sea pollution, and that the problem of ecology upsets you. You are shocked by the misuse made of the earth's products and the progressive destruction of the environment. And you are right. One must take a coordinated and responsible action before our planet suffers irreversible damage.But, dear young people, there exists also a pollution of ideas and morals which can lead to the destruction of man. The pollution is sin, from which lies are born.
Imagine the slogan potential: "Go Soul Green." "Stop Global Sinning." "An Inconvenient Truth." "Save the Earth."
Some of these slogans have already been taken, it occurs to me, but surely they apply more to the cause than to the effect. After all, that was Monsignor Girotti's point.
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