In the last few posts I have attempted to apply the structuralist principle—in language, structures can carry meaning—to a few of the traditional rhetorical figures. I’ve looked at epizeuxis and diacope, antithesis, and gradatio, and in this post I will add one more, congeries. In a way congeries is the rhetorical figure without a structure. … Continue reading A Heap of Words

In this post I will talk a little more about the meaning of rhetorical figures, and I hope in the process to address a few questions and comments I’ve received. Rhetorical figures usually have more than one possible meaning. That’s not odd—meaning is rarely one-to-one. Most words, for instance, have a variety of meanings. Take … Continue reading Meaning and Rhetoric #2

In my last post, I talked about the principle that structures can carry meaning, and I gave the examples of a couple of sentence types: tag questions and the cleft construction. In this post I want to talk about the structural meaning of a couple of rhetorical figures. My goal, if I ever reach it, … Continue reading Meaning and Rhetoric