Definition:
(1) A figure of speech.
(2) A rhetorical device that produces a shift in the meanings of words--in contrast to a scheme, which changes only the shape of a phrase.
See also:
- Figurative Language
- Figures, Tropes, & Other Rhetorical Terms
- Tool Kit for Rhetorical Analysis
- Top 20 Figures of Speech
Etymology:
From the Greek, "a turn"Examples and Observations:
- "For the Roman rhetorician Quintilian, tropes were metaphors and metonyms, etc., and figures were such forms of discourse as rhetorical questions, digression, repetition, antithesis, and periphrasis (also referred to as schemes). He noted that the two kinds of usage were often confused (a state of affairs that has continued to this day)."
(Tom McArthur, Oxford Companion to the English Language. Oxford Univ. Press, 1992) - "What was abandoned in the course of the 19th century was the traditionally strict distinction between tropes and figures/schemes (Sharon-Zisser, 1993). It gave way to the overall terms 'figures du discours' (Fontanier), 'figures of speech' (Quinn), 'rhetorical figures' (Mayoral), 'figures de style' (Suhamy, Bacry), or simple 'figures' (Genette)."
(H.F. Plett, "Figures of Speech," Encyclopedia of Rhetoric. Oxford Univ. Press, 2002) - Trope as a Buzzword
"The new word-that-must-be-used is 'trope,' meaning metaphor, example, literary device, picture--and maybe whatever else the writer wants it to mean.
"The main meaning of 'trope' is 'figure of speech.' . . .
"But as I’ve noted before, the sense has been extended to something vaguer and less effective, like 'theme,' 'motif' or 'image.'
"One interesting point: according to our article archive, 'trope' has appeared 91 times in articles in the past year. A search of NYTimes.com, however, shows a staggering 4,100 uses in the past year--which suggests that blogs and reader comments may be the biggest sources of 'trope' inflation."
(Philip B. Corbett, "More Weary Words." The New York Times, Nov. 10, 2009) - Master Tropes
"Giambattista Vico (1668–1744) is usually credited with being the first to identify metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche and irony as the four basic tropes (to which all others are reducible), although this distinction can be seen as having its roots in the Rhetorica of Peter Ramus (1515-72) (Vico 1744, 129-31). This reduction was popularized in the twentieth century by the American rhetorician Kenneth Burke (1897-1933), who referred to the four 'master tropes' (Burke, 1969, 503-17)."
(Daniel Chandler, Semiotics: The Basics, 2nd ed. Routledge, 2007)
Metaphor
"The streets were a furnace, the sun an executioner."
(Cynthia Ozick, "Rosa")
Metonymy
"Detroit is still hard at work on an SUV that runs on rain forest trees and panda blood."
(Conan O'Brien)
Synecdoche
"At midnight I went on deck, and to my mate's great surprise put the ship round on the other tack. His terrible whiskers flitted round me in silent criticism."
(Joseph Conrad, The Secret Sharer)
Irony
"But now we got weapons
Of the chemical dust
If fire them we're forced to
Then fire them we must
One push of the button
And a shot the world wide
And you never ask questions
When God's on your side."
(Bob Dylan, "With God on Our Side") - Signifyin(g) as the Slave's Trope
"If Vico and Burke, or Nietzsche, de Man, and Bloom, are correct in identifying four and six 'master tropes,' then we might think of these as the 'master's tropes,' and of Signifyin(g) as the slave's trope, the trope of tropes, as [Harold] Bloom characterizes metalepsis, 'a trope-reversing trope, a figure of a figure.' Signifyin(g) is a trope in which are subsumed several other rhetorical tropes, including metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony (the master tropes), and also hyperbole, litotes, and metalepsis (Bloom's supplement to Burke). To this list we could easily add aporia, chiasmus, and catechresis, all of which are used in the ritual of Signifyin(g)."
(Henry Louis Gates, Jr., The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism. Oxford Univ. Press, 1988) - Tropes in Pragmatics and Rhetoric
"The Sperber-Wilson theory [in pragmatics] bears on rhetoric at almost every point, but nowhere more strikingly than in the taxonomy of trope. Traditionally, rhetoric has represented figures (especially tropes) as involving translatio, a 'wresting,' distortion, or strangeness, different from ordinary speech: 'Figurative speech . . . is estranged from the ordinary habit and manner of our daily talk and writing' [George Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie]. But this idea of figures as interruptions of a normal grammaticality is no longer tenable. For ordinary speech is itself full of schemes and tropes. As the poet Samuel Butler wrote of Hudibras, 'For rhetoric, he could not ope / His mouth but out there flew a trope.' Rhetoricians have come to terms with Sperber and Wilson's demonstration that figures are taken up in just the same way as so-called 'literal' utterances--that is, by inferences of relevance, from shared domains of assumption. These ideas will not be repugnant to those rhetoricians who have liked to think of figurative discourse as logically based. And they have many valuable applications in interpretation."
(Alastair Fowler, "Apology for Rhetoric." Rhetorica, Spring 1990)
Pronunciation: TROP
Also Known As: turn of phrase, figure of speech, figure
