Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: Version 1.0 Netnews CMS/BITNET 5/19/85; site PSUVM.BITNET Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!rochester!cmu-cs-pt!cadre!psuvax1!psuvm.bitnet!t3b From: T3B@psuvm.BITNET Newsgroups: net.nlang Subject: Re: Rhetorical Device Query Message-ID: <2120T3B@psuvm> Date: Tue, 20-Aug-85 08:56:42 EDT Article-I.D.: psuvm.2120T3B Posted: Tue Aug 20 08:56:42 1985 Date-Received: Fri, 23-Aug-85 20:53:05 EDT References: <277@mit-athena.UUCP> <3318@dartvax.UUCP> <723@ptsfa.UUCP> <> <181@proper.UUCP> <634@psivax.UUCP> 538@calmasd.UUCP Lines: 33 > [original note asks if there is a name for the rhetorical device > of using a trite phrase restored to its original meaning] The definitive book on figures of speech is probably still Quintilian's INSTITUTES OF ORATORY, and I don't remember his discussing this one. But you may really, in your question be talking about language-turns of at least three sorts: 1) Trite, outworn phrases restored to their original meanings. 2) Phrases normally used metaphorically that are invoked literally. 3) Usually ironic catch phrases that are de-ironized. Of this last one, for which I'd tentatively propose the name REIRONY or DEIRONY, there's a complication. In the examples you cited, there is not a reduction of an original irony to literalism, but an *addition* of irony achieved when ironic expectations are reversed--itself an irony. Hence, there is a sense in which all three of these usages are ironic, since they are not an absence of the original metaphor, cliche, or irony, but an ironic reversal of our expectations about it. Do you know Wayne Booth's RHETORIC OF IRONY? Might be some theory there that would help. -- Tom Benson {akgua,allegra,ihnp4,cbosgd}!psuvax1!psuvm.bitnet!t3b (UUCP) T3B@PSUVM (BITNET) 76044,3701 (COMPUSERVE)