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Title: ERRORS VS. RHETORICAL DEVICES


1
ERRORS VS. RHETORICAL DEVICES
  • by Don L. F. Nilsen

2
  • Ambiguity is bad.
  • Puns, double entendre and paranomasia are good.

3
DOUBLE ENTENDRE
  • The playwright Oscar Hammerstein, who used to
    work in a cigar factory, said that a play is like
    a cigar. If its good, everybody wants a box,
    and if its bad, no amount of puffing will make
    it draw.
  • (Nilsen 99)

4
  • Cliches and trite expressions are bad.
  • But idiomatic expressions are good.

5
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)

6
  • Confusion and chaos are bad.
  • But enigma and paradox are good.

7
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)

8
  • Contradiction and incongruity are bad.
  • But oxymorons and equivocations are good.

9
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).

10
  • Doggerel is bad.
  • Intentional doggerel is good.

11
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)

12
  • Faulty grammar is bad.
  • But anacoluthon (intentional faulty grammar) is
    good.

13
ANACOLUTHON
  • I like meat better than any other vegetable
    except ice cream.
  • (Schwartz 25)

14
  • Faulty parallelism is bad.
  • But zeugma (intentional faulty parallelism) is
    good.

15
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).

16
  • Imitation and repetititiveness is bad.
  • But parody and caricature are good.

17
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

18
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.

19
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

20
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).

21
  • An inept comparison is bad.
  • But a parable, simile or analogy is good.

22
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).

23
  • Jargon, gobbledygook, newspeak and doublespeak
    are bad.
  • But inkhorn terms and classical allusions and
    even jargon can be good.

24
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)

25
  • Lies, exaggerations and embellishments of the
    truth are bad.
  • But metaphor, satire, and sarcasm are good.

26
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)

27
  • A non sequitur or a tense shift is bad.
  • But an anachronism, flash-back, one-liner or In
    Medias Res is good.

28
ANACHRONISM
  • In Kurt Vonneguts 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.

29
  • Obscenity and pornography are bad.
  • But scatology, eroticism, and innuendo are good.

30
INNUENDO 1
  • Bill Barnes tells about a sketch he wrote about a
    woman who sold popcorn. The guys line was her
    popcorns fairly fresh. He says that he got
    into a particular frame of mind, and everything
    got to be a little naughty--

31
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)

32
  • Overstatement is bad.
  • But hyperbole (intentional overstatement) is good.

33
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)

34
  • Redundancy and repetition are bad.
  • But a tautology (as in a dictionary definition)
    and redundancy can be good.

35
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)

36
  • A slip of the tongue, or an incorrect word choice
    is bad.
  • But a malapropism, a spoonerism, or a Bunkerism
    is good.

37
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 Id Bear becomes Gladly, the
    Cross-Eyed Bear
  • Round Yon Virgin becomes Round Eyed Virgin
  • Pontius Pilate becomes Pontius Pilot
  • (Fromkin 233)

38
  • A spelling error is bad.
  • But cacography (intentionally bad writing) is
    good.

39
CACOGRAPHY
  • In nineteenth-century American humorthe
    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)

40
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)

41
  • !
  • Understatement is bad.
  • But litotes (intentional understatement) is good.

42
!!LITOTES
  • Left to our own devices, we Wobegonians go
    straight for the small potatoes. Magestic
    doesnt appeal to us we like the Grand Canyon
    better with Clarence and Arlene parked in front
    of it, smiling.
  • (Keillor 69)

43
!!!An Important Web Site
  • The The Impotence of Proofreading (Taylor Mali)
  • http//www.youtube.com/watch?vOonDPGwAyfQfeature
    search

44
  • References
  • Baars, Benard J. On Eliciting Predictable Speech
    Errors in the Laboratory. in Fromkin 1980
    307-318.
  • Berger, Arthur Asa. The Art of Comedy Writing.
    New Brunswick, NJ Transaction Publishers, 1997.
  • Christ, Henry C. Language and Literature. New
    York, NY Harcourt, 1972.
  • Erard, Michael. UmSlips, Stumbles, and Verbal
    Blunders, and What They Mean. New York, NY
    Pantheon/Random House, 2007.
  • Eschholz, Paul, and Alfred Rosa, eds. Subject and
    Strategy, 2nd Edition Boston, MA St. Martins
    Press, 1981.

45
  • Eschholz, Paul, Alfred Rosa, and Virginia Clark.
    Language Awareness Readings for College Writers,
    10th Edition. Bedford/St. Martins, 2009.
  • Fromkin, Victoria A., ed. Errors in Linguistic
    Performance Slips of the Tongue, Ear, Pen, and
    Hand. New York, NY Academic Press, 1980.
  • Fromkin, Victoria A., ed. Speech Errors as
    Linguistic Evidence. The Hague, Netherlands
    Mouton, 1973.
  • Fry, D. B. The Linguistic Evidenced of Speech
    Errors. in Fromkin 1973 157-164.
  • Fry, William F. Jr., and Melanie Allen. Make Em
    Laugh Life Studies of Lonely Writers. New York,
    NY Science, 1976.

46
  • Grotjahn, Martin. Beyond Laughter Humor and the
    Subconscious. New York, NY McGraw, 1966.
  • Harley, T. A. Speech Errors Psycholinguistic
    Approach. Encyclopedia of Language and
    Linguistics, Second Edition. New York, NY
    ScienceDirect, 2006) 739-745.
  • Helitzer, Melvin, ed. Comedy Techniques for
    Writers and Performers. Athens, OH Lawhead,
    1984.
  • Hill, Archibald A. A Theory of Speech Errors.
    in Fromkin 1973 205-215.

47
  • Hockett, Charles F. Where the Tongue Slips,
    There Slip I. in Fromkin 1973 93-120.
  • Keillor, Garrison. Lonesome Whistle Blowing.
    Time 4 (Nov. 1985) 68-73.
  • Lindfors, Judith Wells. Childrens Language and
    Learning. Englewood Cliffs, NJ Prentice Hall,
    1980.
  • McKay, Donald G. Spoonerisms The Structure of
    Errors in the Serial Order of Speech. in Fromkin
    1973 164-195.

48
  • Mueller, Robert Kirk. The Use (and Abuse) of
    Buzzwords. For Members Only A Newsletter for
    American Express Cardmembers 1.4 (1985) 4.
  • Nash, Ogden. Marriage Llnes Notes of a Student
    Husband. New York, NY Little, Brown, 1964.
  • Nilsen, Alleen Pace, and Don L. F. Nilsen.
    Encyclopedia of 20th Century American Humor.
    Westport, CT Greenwood, 2000.
  • Nilsen, Don L. F. Using Humorous Language to
    Teach Literary Principles. Teaching English in
    the Two-Year College 14.2 (1987) 98-105.
  • Potter, John M. What Was the Matter with Dr.
    Spooner? in Fromkin 1973 13-34.

49
  • Schmitz, Neil. Of Huck and Alice Humorous
    Writing in American Literature. Minneapolis, MN
    University of Minnesota Press, 1983.
  • Schwartz, Alvin, comp. Flapdoodle. New York, NY
    Lippincott, 1980.
  • Wells, Carolyn, ed. A Parody Anthology. New York,
    NY Scribner, 1904.
  • Wright, Edmond. Narrative, Perception, Language
    and Faith. New York, NY Palgrave/MacMillan,
    2005.
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