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.
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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 oversprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
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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 quavers
On 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.
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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”
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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”
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• 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.
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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 Day
Every 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.
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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, flashback, 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.
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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 fermented
Inside; they lamented
Made cider inside ‘er inside.
(Willard Espy)
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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.
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• 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)
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Fruit Personification
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Euphemism:
“Name of Thrones” by Michael Cohen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcjchDiFhqg
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