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ERRORS VS. RHETORICAL DEVICES

by Don L. F. Nilsen and

Alleen Pace Nilsen

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• Ambiguity is bad.

• Puns, double entendre and paranomasia are good.

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DOUBLE ENTENDRE

The playwright Oscar Hammerstein, who used to work in a cigar factory, said that a play is like a cigar. “If it’s good, everybody wants a box, and if it’s bad, no amount of puffing will make it draw.”

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• Cliches and trite expressions are bad.

• But idiomatic expressions are good.

IDIOMATIC EXPRESSIONS

Even though you are not an acrobat or an infant, you can “put your foot in your mouth.”

If someone “has two left feet,” we do not order special shoes.

When someone “kicks the bucket” we are more likely to head for the funeral home than for the mop closet.

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• Confusion and chaos are bad.

• But enigma and paradox are good.

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PARADOX

Aesop tells about a traveler who sought refuge with a satyr on a very cold night. It was so cold that the stranger blew on his hands to make them warm. The next morning the traveler was served some hot porridge, so he blew on it to make it cool. On seeing this, the satyr threw the traveler out of his home, for he would have nothing to do with a man who could blow hot and cold with the same breath.

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• Contradiction and incongruity are bad.

• But oxymorons and equivocations are good.

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OXYMORONS

“Blanket” originally meant a “white cloth”; therefore, a “black blanket” is a concealed oxymoron. Other concealed oxymorons include “young senator,” “typed manuscript,” and “old novel.”

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• Doggerel is bad.

• Intentional doggerel is good.

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GOOD DOGGEREL

I love you more than a duck can swim,

And more than a grapefruit squirts,

I love you more than commercials are a bore,

And more than a toothache hurts.(Ogden Nash)

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• Faulty grammar is bad.

• But anacoluthon (intentional faulty grammar) is good.

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ANACOLUTHON

I like meat better than any other vegetable except ice cream.

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• Faulty parallelism is bad.

• But zeugma (intentional faulty parallelism) is good.

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ZEUGMA

In a 1975 speech, Gerald Ford said that there are three major ways to be kept informed about what is going on in Washington: “The electronic media, the print media, and Doonesbury”

…not necessarily in that order.

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• Imitation and repetititiveness is bad.

• But parody and caricature are good.

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ORIGINAL 1

Hear the sledges with the bells—Silver bells!

What a world of merriment their melody foretells!

How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,In the icy air of night!

While the stars that oversprinkleAll the heavens, seem to twinkleWith a crystalline delight;

Keeping time time, time

In a sort of Runic rhyme,

To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells

From the bells, bells, bells, bells,

Bells, bells, bells—

From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

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PARODY

Hear the fluter with his flute,Silver flute!

Oh, what a world of wailing is awakened by its toot!

How it demi-semi quaversOn the maddened air of night!

And defieth all endeavors To escape the sound or sight

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Of the flute, flute, flute,

With its tootle, tootle, toot…

Of the flute, flewt, fluit, floot,

Phlute, phlewt, phlewght,

And the tootle, tootle, tooting of its toot.

MONDEGREENS

Parodies are intentional, but Mondegreens are unintentional.

When children are learning adult language, when adults are learning a new academic discipline, or when anyone is learning a foreign language, we are often unsure how to analyze or break up the new words and phrases.

Reanalysis is when we break up the words in ways that make a new meaning that was not intended in the original.

These are called “mondegreens” because they are based on the following Scottish ballad:

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The Bonny Earl of Murray

Ye Highlands and ye Lawlands,

Oh! Where ha’e ye been:

They ha’e slain the Early of Murray,

And they laid him on the Green.

But the last two lines are reanalyzed as follows:

They ha’e slain the Earl of Murray,

And the Lady Mondegreen.

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Mondegreens are especially prevalent during the Christmas season.

In “The twelve days of Christmas”

“Ten lords a-leaping” “Ten lawyers leaving”

“Nine ladies dancing “Nine lazy Hansons”

“Six geese a-laying” “Six geezers laying”

“And a partridge in a pear tree” “And a paltry tin-affair tree.”

In “Silent Night,” “Sleep in heavenly peace” “Sleep in heavenly peas”

In “Santa Claus is comin’ to Town,” “making a list and checkin’ it twice” “making a list and chicken and rice.”

In “Winter Wonderland,” “Later on, we’ll conspire” “Later on, milk and spiders,” and “Parson Brown” “sparse and brown” or “parched and brown.”

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But Mondegreens happen whenever we mishear something.

• “the acts of God” becomes “the ax of God”

• “Pulitzer Prize” becomes “pullet surprise”

• “of thee I sing” becomes “of the icing”

• “Gladly Thy Cross I’d Bear” becomes “Gladly, the Cross-Eyed Bear”

• “Round Yon Virgin” becomes “Round John Vergis” (an ASU Professor of Education)

• “Pontius Pilate” becomes “Pontius Pilot”

Christmas Mondegreens on Channel 15’s The List:

http://www.thelistshow.tv/the-list/whats-trending-misfit-holiday-lyrics

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• An inept comparison is bad.

• But a parable, simile or analogy is good.

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ANALOGY

Martin Grotjahn compares a cartoonist with a witch doctor, saying, “As in primitive societies, where the witch doctor creates a doll and uses it, by magic, to gain power over the person the doll represents, so the caricaturist hopes unconsciously to regain this magical power in his cartoon and to destroy his enemy with it”

• This witch doll is in our dentist’s office.

• She represents our ability to use analogy in order to transcend the mundane world… or that the dentist has the magic to change our lives.

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• Jargon, gobbledygook, newspeak and doublespeak are bad.

• But inkhorn terms and classical allusions and even jargon can be good.

Business Jargon:

Candy Store Problem: A situation involving a wide variety of choices with little basis for picking one alternative over the others.

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Kangaroo Strategies:

Adventurous strategies where you leap into the unknown unsure of where you will land.

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Mouse Milking:

Undue effort expended to accomplish a small result.

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Hump DayEvery Wednesday is called “hump day.”

It refers to getting through the middle of the week.

Our students tell us that this has nothing to do with sex.

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• Lies, exaggerations and embellishments of the truth are bad.

• But metaphor, satire, and sarcasm are good.

SATIRE

Dylan Williams says that satire is “a literary form which mixes humor, wit and critical attitude in order to improve society.” Its original meaning was “a dish filled with mixed fruits.”

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• A non sequitur or a tense shift is bad.

• But an anachronism, flash-back, one-liner or In Medias Res is good.

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ANACHRONISM

In Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time. On the Planet Tralfalmador, all time happens simultaneously. Many postmodern novels violate the expectations of time, space, and even logic itself.

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• Obscenity and pornography are bad.

• But scatology, eroticism, and innuendo are good.

Epiphany:Bad for Santa; Good for the Elves

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INNUENDO

Bill Barnes tells about a sketch he wrote about a woman who sold popcorn. The guy’s line was “her popcorn’s fairly fresh.” He says that he got into a particular frame of mind, and everything got to be a little naughty--

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“…everything having to do with popcorn. Like, “maybe a little old, well, but with melted butter, who can tell?”

“It just got very double entendre, and it had a lot of funny sounds in it.”

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• Overstatement is bad.

• But hyperbole (intentional overstatement) is good.

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HYPERBOLE

Ed Hercer says, “Comedy is to the mind what caricature is to the eye. A good caricature artist can spot those characteristics and define his subject and then exaggerate them, put a new perspective on them again, almost make them grotesque. Yet the recognizability is never destroyed. In fact; it is often enhanced. It is sometimes easier to recognize a celebrity from a well-executed caricature than from a portrait.”

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• Redundancy is bad.

• But a repetition is good.

• A definition in a dictionary is usually a tautology, which is a form of repetition: “A dog is a small friendly canine which is domesticated.”

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REPETITION

There was an old lady of Ryde

Who ate some green apples, and died.

The apples fermentedInside; they lamented

Made cider inside ‘er inside.(Willard Espy)

The The Impotence of Proofreading (Taylor Mali):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OonDPGwAyfQ&feature=search

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• A slip of the tongue, or an incorrect word choice is bad.

• But a malapropism, a spoonerism, or a Bunkerism is can be a rhetorical device.

• A spelling error is bad.

• But cacography (intentionally bad writing) is good.

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VERNACULAR OR COLLOQUIAL WRITING

Vernacular authors like Mark Twain or Charles Dickens would write “wuz,” “iz” “wer” and “sez” in stead of writing “was,” “is” “were,” and “says.”

This vernacular writing is much truer to the way that these words are actually pronounced.

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• Understatement is bad.

• But litotes (intentional understatement) is good.

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LITOTES

Left to our own devices, we Wobegonians go straight for the small potatoes. Majestic doesn’t appeal to us; we like the Grand Canyon better with Clarence and Arlene parked in front of it, smiling.”

(Garrison Keillor)

Fruit Personification

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Euphemism:

“Name of Thrones” by Michael Cohen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcjchDiFhqg

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