Think about TV ads. Analyze. Ask questions.

 

 

Consider these ideas for your own compositions.
TV Set   Computer and Quill Pen
WHAT FIGURES OF SPEECH?
WHAT FIGURES OF SPEECH?

Classical rhetoricians have traditionally used the term "figures of speech" as a general term to describe any out-of-the-ordinary variation in the meaning of a word (trope) or in the arrangement of words (scheme). Quintilian defined a figure as anything "artfully varied from common usage."

Scholars have labeled over 200 such possible variations with Greek and Latin names. But, today, except for a few terms (e.g. alliteration, assonance, rhyme) used in analyzing poetry, not much attention is given to these ways of intensifying words.

Tropes commonly seen in advertising include: simile (explicit comparison, using like or as: e.g."solid as a rock"); metaphor (implicit comparison: e.g. "a tiger in your tank": synchedoche (part stands for the whole: e.g. "wheels" for car); metonymy (related attributes: e.g. "bench" for judges; "Wall Street"): periphrasis (descriptive phrase instead of a proper name: e.g. "the Real Thing,"): personification (giving inanimate things human qualities: e.g. "Charlie" perfume); apostrophe (direct address to an absent person: e.g. "You've come a long way, baby."); onomatopoeia (sound related: "plop, plop, fizz, fizz"): oxymoron (linking contradictories: "cool fire"); rhetorical question (indirect statement, no external response expected: "Aren't you glad you use Dial?"); irony (saying one thing, but meaning another: context cues needed); puns (witty word play on similar sounds or meanings ); litotes (understatement); and, perhaps most common in ads, hyperbole (overstatement, exaggeration).

Schemes (word order variations: i.e. adding, subtracting, repeating, rearranging elements) commonly seen in ads: parallelism and isocolon (repeating similarities); antithesis and juxtaposition (opposing ideas put close together): climax (increasing order of importance); parenthesis (inserting ideas); apposition (adding modifiers); ellipsis (omitting items); anaphora (repeating openings); epistrophe (repeating endings).

For centuries, in the distant past, poets and artists were often paid by the wealthy of church and state, thus producing a large body of religious and patriotic literature supporting and praising their patrons. So many poetic "figures of speech" (such as alliteration and rhyme in word pairs) are used today that ads can be seen as the "poetry of the corporation" and advertising copywriters can be seen as the paid poets working for their patrons.

 

In exposition, the most commonly used figures of speech are those involving repetition (for emphasis), arrangement (for coherence), and comparison (such as metaphors, similes, and analogies - which have two functions: explanatory and associative).

Metaphoric language is useful in expository writing to explain the unknown by the known, the unfamiliar by the familiar, or the complex by the simple.

For example, a writer might compare the body's unseen inner network of arteries with the commonly seen network of highways. Present situations are often compared metaphorically with an allusion to past events: "He met his Waterloo."

Such comparisons are common, useful, and frequently appropriate. Yet, if fully extended into analogies, they may not be totally accurate ("faulty analogy") because exact comparison cannot be made of different kinds of things.

Metaphoric language also functions to associate: whenever items are linked together, the emotional associations are also transferred. Logically, maybe they "shouldn't." Emotionally, they do. Thus, while "guilt by association" is a formal fallacy, or a logical error, it remains an effective rhetorical tactic.

You needn't know all the figures of speech by name. Nor do the ad writers who spontaneously write "Hot Diggety Dog." (tmesis: the interjection of a word between parts of a compound word.)

But, the more conscious you are that such variations are possible and available, the more control you have over your own writing.

And, the more you'll enjoy ads.

 
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