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.