Design Strategies

• Figurative Language: 4 tropes or classes – Irony: incongruity between words & meaning – Metaphor: comparison implying likeness between two disparate concepts – Synecdoche: substitution of part for whole or the whole for the part – Metonymy: symbolic substitution of attribute or symbol for a concrete “thing”

Design Strategies

• Literal Language: “It’s raining hard” • Figurative Language: 4 tropes or classes – Irony: “Lovely weather we’re having” – Metaphor: “It’s raining cats and dogs” – Synecdoche: “The drops are really coming .down” – Metonymy: “It’s umbrella weather”

1 Personality Type & Trope Style

1. Identify your primary trope style 2. Identify your secondary trope styles 3. Identify your least likely trope style

Design Strategies: Group Exercises

• Define a universal theme & brief details – First Love / Eternal Love / Love Lost – Unattainable Love – Infidelity – Social Class, Headline, Famous Person or Event, etc. • Find a Cliché as a workable theme. – Grass is greener on the other side – Can’t judge a book by its cover

2 Design Strategies: Metaphor

• Verbal equation comparing two unusual concepts with distant link • Right brain holistic mode to compare similarities and synthesize new comparison • Examples of metaphors in songs? • Specific types of metaphors: – Simile: tentative or weaker metaphor using like, as, or than – Personification - examples

Design Strategies: Metaphor

•Exercise: – Use ROADTRIP as a metaphor to design a lyric layout for your universal theme – Complete the metaphor – Realistic comparisons

3 Design Strategies: Synecdoche

• Substitutes the part for the whole (more common) or the whole for the part • Left brain mode (analytical) identify key components and parts of the whole • The substitution must embody the whole • Examples: – Sailing – The canvas can do miracles – A bottle full of bubbles = ?

Design Strategies: Metonymy

• External attribute or symbol for a concrete object • Can be confused with synecdoche - more abstract, not directly connected • Combination of left & right brain modes • Possession for possessor • Place for place’s identity • Container for the contained • Creator for the creation

4 Design Strategies: Metonymy

• Enactment – cause for effect •Exercise: – Identify an effect of your universal theme and then visualize the specifics to come up with metonymy

Design Strategies: Irony

• Paradox – overstatement - understatement • Pun – word play – words pronounced the same with different meanings • Examples: – Train – teach, vehicle, line, link of ideas – Blue, blew • Double entendre – double meaning, symbolism – often used in sex plots / themes • Pitfall – have to hear the pun and connection

5 Design Strategies Add Depth

• Majority of song lyrics are either: • Plot / story-line driven lyrics OR emotion driven lyrics

• Go to the library and search the periodicals and go online and look at headlines and create examples of each of the 4 design strategies • For this afternoon (2 PM): bring back headlines and / or article descriptions used to create your examples

• Framing Strategies & Plot Categories are the nuts & bolts assembly of the lyric composition

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