Tropes and Figures
Tropes are words or expressions used in a sense other than the expected one, as when a metaphor carries a word over from one domain to another. Figures are departures from the ordinary pattern of language that are therefore perceived as artful, as in repetitions, contrasts and plays on sound. Together they make up rhetoric’s stylistic devices, what in everyday speech are called rhetorical devices.
More than ornament
Tropes and figures have long been regarded as the ornament of speech, something added once the arguments are in place. In classical rhetoric they belong to elocutio, the third of the five canons of rhetoric. But they are never mere ornament. A metaphor chooses one perspective and excludes others, and a well-formed antithesis can make a choice seem self-evident. Tropes and figures work as arguments, and that is why they are part of logos.
What is a trope?
The word comes from the Greek tropos, “turn”. In a trope, the word is turned away from its usual meaning towards another. When Zlatan Ibrahimović says that “lions don’t compare themselves with humans”, he is not talking about zoology, but about himself and his critics.
The four master tropes
In the essay “Four Master Tropes” (1941), the American rhetorician Kenneth Burke gathered the tropes around four basic forms. They rest on different kinds of relation between what is said and what is meant.
Metaphor
Rests on similarity: something is carried over from one domain to another. “A storm of debt is sweeping in.” “The organisation is a ship in a storm.”
Metonymy
Rests on contiguity: something is named through what is associated with it. “The pen is mightier than the sword.” “Parliament has decided.”
Synecdoche
Rests on quantity: the part stands for the whole, or the whole for the part. “Caesar defeated the Gauls.” “We need more hands on the project.”
Irony
Rests on opposition: one says the opposite of what one means. “The national team was brilliant yesterday!”, after a defeat.
Four kinds of figures
Figures are usually divided according to the level of language at which they work.
Figures of sound
Create patterns in sound, like the alliteration in “Guinness is good for you”.
Figures of words
Repeat words or phrases, like the anaphora “I have a dream” in Martin Luther King’s speech of 1963.
Figures of construction
Change the grammatical pattern, as when a sentence is broken in two: “Not for the rich. But for the wise.”
Figures of thought
Arrange the content and the thought, like the antithesis in “one man’s meat is another man’s poison”.
The rhetorical question
A rhetorical question is not asked to get an answer, but so that the audience will already have answered it in their minds. “Weren’t you angry when you found out that Facebook and Google sell information about you?” The question presupposes both a fact and a feeling, and it is hard for the listener to say no without first questioning the premise. That is why the rhetorical question works as much through pathos as through logos.
Levels of style
Classical rhetoric tied tropes and figures to three levels of style, which in turn corresponded to the speaker’s three duties.
Grand style
For solemn occasions, with many tropes and figures. Associated with the duty to move the audience, movere.
Middle style
For most occasions, with moderate ornament. Associated with the duty to please, delectare.
Plain style
Close to everyday language, with little ornament. Associated with the duty to teach, docere.
Which level fits is decided by the situation, by what the Greeks called to prepon and the Romans decorum: the fitting.
Tropes and figures in images
Tropes and figures are not found only in language. An image can be a metaphor or a metonymy just as well as a word. A worn and dirty national coat of arms can stand for a whole nation, the part for the whole, and at the same time let the decay represent the state of the country. The image then argues without a single word: no one cares any more, and the country has fallen into decay. Read more on the page about visual rhetoric.
Do you want to use the images of language deliberately in your own speeches and texts? We practise it in my courses.
Questions
What is the difference between a trope and a figure?
A trope changes the meaning of a word, as when “lion” means a person. A figure changes the form, that is, how the words are arranged, repeated or sound, without the words themselves taking on another meaning.
What are rhetorical devices?
Rhetorical devices is an everyday collective name for the means a speaker uses to persuade. Usually tropes and figures are meant, but sometimes also arguments and modes of persuasion such as ethos, pathos and logos.
What are the most common figures of speech?
Among the most common are metaphor, simile, alliteration, anaphora, antithesis and the rhetorical question. The simile is a metaphor that makes the comparison explicit with “like” or “as”: “strong as an ox”.
Sources
Quintilian, Institutio oratoria 8.6 and book 9
Cicero, Orator 69–99
Kenneth Burke, “Four Master Tropes”, in A Grammar of Motives (1945)