Analysis4
3-1-16
Kendal Gast
I decided
to go on a trope hunt through my own knowledge and one of last year’s issues of
Time.
The first antonomasia that came to mind was Donald Trump’s nickname “The
Donald”. This is unique because his
nickname is his name, except for the “the” addition to the front, implying that
of all the Donalds in the world, Trump is the one to be.
For metonomy,
I saw an ad for Sports Illustrated’s
Sportsman of the Year. This is awarded
to an athlete of some sort, so sportsman is clearly related to those that play
sports, or athletes. “Sportsman of the
Year” simply adds another title to an athlete, perhaps along with their
antonomasia like Shaun White’s “The Flying Tomato”.
For
hyperbaton, Time’s use of explanation
after verbatim quotes in the verbatim section can be seen as this trope. “ ‘The 300th homicide is no more
tragic than he first.’ Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, Baltimore mayor, after her
city exceeded 300 murders for 2015, the most since 1999”.
For
periphrasis, I found a description of ISIS: “The Islamic State is a fibroid of
territory enmeshed in a cat’s cradle of ethnic, tribal, religious and
geopolitical strands so densely tangled as to defy solution”. Fibroid is a word for muscle strand or
sinew. Cat’s cradle is a string game
played between two people, here used to simply describe a mess. The Middle East is clearly at war with itself
and outside powers, creating a situation perfect for an organization like ISIS
to emerge and make their own demands known.
For
metaphor, I found a sentence in an article on why the world was crying for
Paris after the November 13th attacks: “The machinery of state
ground into gear”. The author was
talking about how François Hollande wanted to go to war with ISIS because of
the terrorist attacks. Relating
government to slow machinery is a common metaphor here in the United States, so
it is, I don’t know, comforting(?) to read that other governments have similar
issues to our own.
For
hyperbole, I found in the 25 Best Inventions of 2015 the heading, “The meanest,
greenest, driving machine”. It was
referring to the Tesla Model X, an all-electric luxury SUV.
For
catachresis, I found Charlie Sheen’s quote in the verbatim section: “It’s a
hard three letters to absorb”. Perhaps
he wasn’t meaning “hard” as in something difficult to break, like how cement is
really hard, but hard as in just difficult.
Absorb is also a strange word to use since we don’t typically think
about “absorbing” letters in everyday speech.
Or when your doctor tells you you’re positive for HIV.
For
synecdoche I found a mention of “the West” in an article laying out the
timeline of ISIS events. The sentence
was: “In the aftermath of the worst terrorist attack in the West in over a
decade…” Here the author was referring to Paris, a “Western” city on the
European continent. In the same article,
another word describes a part of the whole: “…from Brussels – the capital of
the E.U. – has become a hotbed of European terror plots”. At this particular place the article was
saying how a town across from Brussels has become a “hotbed” for terrorists in
Europe. I don’t know what a hotbed is, but
it must be some sort of region where terror is planned, compared to the larger
global network of ISIS hotbeds.
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