We once had to think carefully about where to place our feet when we first learned to walk, once struggled to tie our shoe laces, and once gazed in amazement at such a thing as a £10 note. However, with time we have become so habitualised to all of these experiences that we are hardly aware of them any more. After all, our attention is finite, and there are so many other things in our busy lives to attend to that as a species, we have evolved to ignore that which we have long since learned.
The same is true for language, hence the phenomenon of cliché. Clichés are usually elaborate rhetorical figures that were once startling and new. However, through long years of use they have become flat, cheap and meaningless, Where once they aroused our curiosity, now they deaden our senses and limit the extent that we can get involved in a text or a speech. When we hear last but not least, two sides to every coin, at the end of the day, we get the clear impression that the speaker is simply parroting something that they have picked up from their surroundings and is not truly involved with the message they wish to convey. So why should we be?
By contrast, when we come across a novel scheme or trope our interest is awakened and our attention piqued, since it presents a pattern with which we are not yet familiar. At the same time, we experience a sense of pleasure and wonder as we enjoy its effects. This is the process which Russian art critic Viktor Schklovsky called ostranie or "defamiliarisation" (see Making Strange on your course website).
This sense of intellectual pleasure is very motivating and if we have enough leisure, we may pause long enough to interrogate the figure in an attempt to understand how it achieves this effect upon is. So we analyse form and meaning, comparing and contrasting it with other language items that we are familiar with.
This in turn leads to increased levels of cognitive processing. The more we interrogate the figure, the more connections we make and the more firmly the words and the message becomes lodged in our mind.
This is what cognitive psychologists Fergus Craik and Robert Lockhart called a depth of processing model of memory (1972). Interestingly, according to their schema, tropes provoke the deepest levels of processing since they primarily involve us in semantic operations as opposed to formal or phonetic ones.
Craik and Lockhart's Depth of Process Model of Linguistic Memory (1972)
I hope now I have convinced you of the benefits of using schemes and tropes. However, just as every coin has two sides (sorry!) I need to include here a word of warning...
The word trope comes from the ancient Greek word for turn or twist. In a sense, schemes and tropes are ways that you can twist language out of shape to make something startling and new.
In this way, experimenting with schemes and tropes is a creative act, just like connecting and combining ideas.
When you think about it, it is very easy to connect and combine images together to make something new – for example, we can picture a dragon with a chicken’s head, a car which looks like a cloud, or a gun that shoots butterflies.
However it is much more difficult to find a context in which these creations would be meaningful. To do this, we would have to tell a convincing story of how the dragon came to have a chicken’s head, or elaborate what applications these innovative cars and guns might have... Not easy tasks I am sure you will agree!
What is true for connecting and combining ideas, is also true for rhetorical figures: it is easy to use schemes and tropes to twist language out of shape, but much more difficult to come up with specific schemes and tropes that are not simply gimmicks but which add meaning and value to a text or utterance.
The same is true for language, hence the phenomenon of cliché. Clichés are usually elaborate rhetorical figures that were once startling and new. However, through long years of use they have become flat, cheap and meaningless, Where once they aroused our curiosity, now they deaden our senses and limit the extent that we can get involved in a text or a speech. When we hear last but not least, two sides to every coin, at the end of the day, we get the clear impression that the speaker is simply parroting something that they have picked up from their surroundings and is not truly involved with the message they wish to convey. So why should we be?
By contrast, when we come across a novel scheme or trope our interest is awakened and our attention piqued, since it presents a pattern with which we are not yet familiar. At the same time, we experience a sense of pleasure and wonder as we enjoy its effects. This is the process which Russian art critic Viktor Schklovsky called ostranie or "defamiliarisation" (see Making Strange on your course website).
This sense of intellectual pleasure is very motivating and if we have enough leisure, we may pause long enough to interrogate the figure in an attempt to understand how it achieves this effect upon is. So we analyse form and meaning, comparing and contrasting it with other language items that we are familiar with.
This in turn leads to increased levels of cognitive processing. The more we interrogate the figure, the more connections we make and the more firmly the words and the message becomes lodged in our mind.
This is what cognitive psychologists Fergus Craik and Robert Lockhart called a depth of processing model of memory (1972). Interestingly, according to their schema, tropes provoke the deepest levels of processing since they primarily involve us in semantic operations as opposed to formal or phonetic ones.
Craik and Lockhart's Depth of Process Model of Linguistic Memory (1972)
I hope now I have convinced you of the benefits of using schemes and tropes. However, just as every coin has two sides (sorry!) I need to include here a word of warning...
The word trope comes from the ancient Greek word for turn or twist. In a sense, schemes and tropes are ways that you can twist language out of shape to make something startling and new.
In this way, experimenting with schemes and tropes is a creative act, just like connecting and combining ideas.
When you think about it, it is very easy to connect and combine images together to make something new – for example, we can picture a dragon with a chicken’s head, a car which looks like a cloud, or a gun that shoots butterflies.
However it is much more difficult to find a context in which these creations would be meaningful. To do this, we would have to tell a convincing story of how the dragon came to have a chicken’s head, or elaborate what applications these innovative cars and guns might have... Not easy tasks I am sure you will agree!
What is true for connecting and combining ideas, is also true for rhetorical figures: it is easy to use schemes and tropes to twist language out of shape, but much more difficult to come up with specific schemes and tropes that are not simply gimmicks but which add meaning and value to a text or utterance.
