ERRORS VS.
RHETORICAL
DEVICES
by Don L. F. Nilsen
42
1
• Ambiguity is bad.
• Puns, double entendre and
paranomasia are good.
42
2
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.”
(Nilsen 99)
42
3
• Cliches and trite
expressions are bad.
• But idiomatic expressions
are good.
42
4
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.”
(Lindfors 55)
42
5
• Confusion and chaos are
bad.
• But enigma and paradox
are good.
42
6
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.
(Eschholz & Rosa [1981]: 99)
42
7
• Contradiction and
incongruity are bad.
• But oxymorons and
equivocations are good.
42
8
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.”
(Christ 972).
42
9
• Doggerel is bad.
• Intentional doggerel is
good.
42
10
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.
(Nash 153)
42
11
• Faulty grammar is bad.
• But anacoluthon
(intentional faulty
grammar) is good.
42
12
ANACOLUTHON
“I like meat better than any
other vegetable except ice
cream.”
(Schwartz 25)
42
13
• Faulty parallelism is bad.
• But zeugma (intentional
faulty parallelism) is good.
42
14
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.
(Nilsen 100).
42
15
• Imitation and
repetititiveness is bad.
• But parody and caricature
are good.
42
16
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;
42
17
ORIGINAL 2
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.
42
18
PARODY 1
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
42
19
PARODY 2
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.
(Wells 140).
42
20
• An inept comparison is
bad.
• But a parable, simile or
analogy is good.
42
21
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”
(Grotjahn 152).
42
22
• Jargon, gobbledygook,
newspeak and doublespeak
are bad.
• But inkhorn terms and
classical allusions and even
jargon can be good.
42
23
BUSINESS JARGON
Candy Store Problem: A situation involving a
wide variety of choices with little basis for
picking one alternative over the others.
Kangaroo Strategies: Adventurous strategies
where you leap into the unknown unsure of
where you will land.
Mouse Milking: Undue effort expended to
accomplish a small result.
(Mueller 4)
42
24
• Lies, exaggerations and
embellishments of the truth are
bad.
• But metaphor, satire, and
sarcasm are good.
42
25
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,” in which
case “Le Cage aux Folles” is a satire in
both senses of the word.
(Helitzer 70)
42
26
• A non sequitur or a tense shift
is bad.
• But an anachronism, flashback, one-liner or In Medias
Res is good.
42
27
ANACHRONISM
In Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five,
Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.
On the planet of Tralfalmador, all time
happens simultaneously. Many
postmodern novels violate the
expectations of time, space, and even
logic itself.
42
28
• Obscenity and
pornography are bad.
• But scatology, eroticism,
and innuendo are good.
42
29
INNUENDO 1
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--
42
30
INNUENDO 2
“…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.”
(Qtd. in Fry, 151)
42
31
• Overstatement is bad.
• But hyperbole (intentional
overstatement) is good.
42
32
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.”
(qtd. in Helitzer 165)
42
33
• Redundancy and repetition
are bad.
• But a tautology (as in a
dictionary definition) and
redundancy can be good.
42
34
REDUNDANCY
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.
(Espy 170)
42
35
• A slip of the tongue, or an
incorrect word choice is bad.
• But a malapropism, a
spoonerism, or a Bunkerism
is good.
42
36
SLIPS OF THE TONGUE
• “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 Eyed Virgin”
• “Pontius Pilate” becomes “Pontius Pilot”
(Fromkin 233)37
42
• A spelling error is bad.
• But cacography
(intentionally bad writing)
is good.
42
38
CACOGRAPHY
“In nineteenth-century American
humor…the immediate imposition of
that generic sign of the unserious, iz,
instantly changes the lens in our
attention to the text, lowers our gaze,
and suffuses the `ideational content,’
the brick, whatever, with the warm glow
of a tolerable miztake.”
(Schmitz 27)
42
39
Cacography (continued)
“Humorists must wrest their writing from
proper writing, and this they do in a
style that enhances speech values and
sets these values against the
perspective values of writing”
(Schmitz 27)
42
40
!
• Understatement is bad.
• But litotes (intentional
understatement) is good.
42
41
!!LITOTES
Left to our own devices, we
Wobegonians go straight for the small
potatoes. Magestic doesn’t appeal to
us; we like the Grand Canyon better
with Clarence and Arlene parked in
front of it, smiling.”
(Keillor 69)
42
42
!!!An Important Web Site
The The Impotence of Proofreading (Taylor Mali):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OonDPGwAyfQ&feature=search
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42
44
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42
46
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48
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