Dr. Briefs To Talk about Prose: A Toolbox of Terms

Here are some concepts and technical terms that will help you express what makes any piece of writing effective. You’ll have a deeper appreciation for good prose (or any kind of literature) knowing these techniques of the writer’s art. Terms Having to Do with Meanings Denotation: a word’s dictionary meaning, the literal meaning, nothing more. Connotation: what a word makes us think of beyond its literal meaning, that is, its associations. Examples: summer, plastic, BMW, Beverly Hills, Friday. Ambiguity: the Latin root ambi means, among other things, both. A word, action, etc. that can be interpreted more than one way is ambiguous. A “bad” movie could be terrific or terrible. If someone turns pale when they see you, their pallor could indicate fear--or love. Ambiguity! Irony: A tough one to define! It’s from the Greek word eironeia which means feigned (pretending to be ignorant about something). It means the use of words to convey the opposite of their literal meaning. Example: That skirt is lovely-- did you make it yourself? On the surface, it sounds as if you’re praising the skirt, but actually, you’re panning it. Another definition is the incongruity between what might be expected to happen and what actually happens. It would be ironic if a firefighter’s house caught on fire or if a fleeing burglar hid the loot in a shed that turned out to belong to the county sheriff. If you move to the desert for the dry climate and your house is swept away by a flash flood. Paradox: “A statement that seems contradictory, unbelievable, or absurd but that may actually be true in fact” (Webster’s). A paradox seems illogical, but isn’t. It’s a paradox that you must turn your wheels in the same direction that you’re skidding in order to get out of a skid or that someone burning up with a fever may feel icy cold. If you feel that someone is too nice to be good, or that a dull blade is more dangerous than a sharp one, you are dealing in paradoxes. As you can see, paradoxes are related to irony (and also to our next term, oxymoron). When Annie Dillard writers, “I got in trouble throwing snowballs, and have seldom been happier since,” she is offering us a paradox. According to humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow, when a society becomes evil (for example, under the Nazis), those people who are maladjusted are, in fact, the mentally healthy ones. “Water is stronger than stone” is a paradox, as is “God writes straight with crooked lines.” Oxymoron: Oxy is Greek for sharp, pointed (clever); moron is Greek for fool, absurd. An oxymoron is an expression that is absurd at the literal level but makes sense at a deeper level: loud silence, sweet sorrow, wise fool, depressing cheerfulness, a blessed curse, a dangerous safety, a poor little rich girl, a bright darkness. Hyperbole: Wild exaggeration for humorous or poignant effect: “Will all great Neptune’s oceans wash this blood clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green one red” (Lady Macbeth). Understatement: Deliberately minimizing the seriousness of something in order to create a humorous or poignant effect: “Hayduke . . . looking down through the swirling haze of dust, saw the glint of gun metal, the flash of field glasses, the movement of men afoot. Retreat seemed appropriate” (Ed Abbey). Attila the Hun galloped through the town whacking off heads and throwing torches through windows. He was feeling irritable. I was not happy to find my tires flat. A “simple, unadorned statement” can “underscore the pathetic or tragic” (Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms) Terms Having to Do with the Sounds of Language Alliteration: repetition of consonant sounds: baby blue, daredevil, top ten, summer in the city (sounds, not necessarily letters), full fathom five thy father lies, Spic ‘n Span, Captain Crunch, Mighty Muffler, Salon Selectives, bed and breakfast, As Good as It Gets, Golden Girls, sweet sixteen, Sinbad the Sailor, Mad Magazine, River Road, Miracle Mile, Carlsbad Caverns, Bisti Badlands, Heartbreak Hotel. “Hearing the ocean wash up on the shore” (Chris Sotelo). (Sibilance means alliteration of the letter s--in other words, hissing sounds!) Assonance: repetition of vowel sounds: Field and Stream, bottle rocket, heavy metal, gas mask, sea breeze, Safeway, Home Alone, jail bait, American Airlines. “But a child may raise it to their ear and listen to extraordinary storms and crashing waves” (Denise Archuleta). Often you’ll find both alliteration and assonance: Candyman, Bugs Bunny, Wind in the Willows, Classic Glass. An extreme example of both together occurs, of course, in rhyming words: The Cat in the Hat. Because they’re fun, everyday and slang names for things often rhyme: ditch witch, fun run, hot spot, big wig. You’ll find alliteration and assonance in the Yellow Pages; on grocery store shelves; in book, magazine, movie, TV show, and song titles; in the names of bands and teams; in slogans and dichos. Onomatopoeia (pronounced On-No-Mah-Toe-Pee-Ah): words that sound like what they mean: hiss, buzz, snap, purr, chirp, ping, boom, whisper, murmur, chatter, hum, rumble, zoom, slush, pop, flutter, clatter, click. Portmanteau words (Port Man Toe): This French word means “carry coat”--suitcase. Two half-boxes locked together--that’s what portmanteau words are. Put moist and dusty together and you get musty; yell and howl and you get yowl; bump and stumble and you get bumble. You can make them up. Rhythm of Words: two words: face down, Cost Plus, can do; two things: hugs and kisses, wine and roses, bread and chocolate, Shop ‘n Save, wash and dry, cease and desist, Aid and Comfort, stand and deliver, divide and conquer. List of three: blood, sweat, and tears*; we pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor; life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Scanning Rhythms: Writers, particularly poets and songwriters, scan lines to see what the pattern of beats is. Language is made up of unstressed “short” syllables (we can indicate them with this little stress-free hammock ) and stressed “long” syllables (we can indicate them with this stressful lightning bolt ). The poets of ancient Greece wrote their poetry in certain patterns, many of which we still use today. Here are five most common, with their names. Iamb (unstressed, stressed) I AM! (Iamb means foot in Greek.) Examples are the words believe, explore, reply, Marie, conceal. Trochee (stressed, unstressed) The word trochee is a trochee. Little, water, candy, Mary. Dactyl (stressed, unstressed, unstressed) (Dactyl means finger in Greek--the pointing finger is a dactyl: a long knuckle, followed by two short ones). Calendar, saxophone, video, honesty, Stephanie. Anapest (unstressed, unstressed, stressed) (Anna, PEST!) resurrect, contradict, undermine. Spondee (stressed, stressed): get real! Play fair! Aim high! (I notice a lot of three stressed beats in English too--don’t know what that’s called: just say no, no can do, bad dirt road, one stern look, one last breath

Note: a line made of five iambs is called iambic pentameter, “iambic five-measure.” Renaissance drama (Shakespeare, etc.) and the great majority of English poems written before the twentieth century are written in iambic pentameter. It’s said that the iambic pentameter is the most natural rhythm (like the heart beat) and line length (about the length of one breath) in English. Notice how often we use it, unconsciously, in speaking: The man next door reminds me of a frog. Your kitchen floor will sparkle in the sun. They caught her and they sent her to the pen. She loves the way you whistle while you work. We packed the car and then we drove away. They lost a lot of dollars at the track. I saw you taking cookies from the jar! I asked you twice to leave the cat alone. Whenever you read well- written prose, keep your ears open for iambic pentameter sentences and enjoy their rhythm and power. Terms Having to Do with Imagery Images or imagery: Imagery is simply anything imagined by any of the senses (not just the eyes). VISUAL images: sight (vis, vid mean see in Latin: visual, video, television) AUDITORY images: hearing (aud means hear, listen in Latin: auditorium, audience, audition, audit) OLFACTORY images: smell (olere means smell in Latin) GUSTATORY images: taste (gustus means taste in Latin: gusto, disgusting) TACTILE images: touch (tact means touch in Latin: intact, tactful, contact) KINESTHETIC images: feeling of muscle, motion, position, tension SYNESTHETIC images: when one sense is described in terms of another: velvety notes of the saxophone, screaming yellow, delicious smell, clean sounds of a new stereo system, a “wonderful burnt-brown smell” of roasting coffee (Poirier-Bures), “a dull, almost transparent smell” of a seashell (Christina Cooley) “I smell a rainbow” (Tom Waits), Duke Ellington describing some of his jazz “like throwing colored sand up into the air.” Notice that imagery can be literal (factual) (you describe the smell of diesel in the air at the bus station) or figurative (metaphorical) (you describe your new baby as a sweet pink peach). In both cases, you’re making your readers use their senses, that is, in both cases, you’re using imagery.

Figurative Language Terms “Figurative language” is writing or speaking that uses lots of “figures of speech.” In the Renaissance, writers divided figures of speech into two types, Rhetorical Figures (the major ones being antithesis, apostrophe, chiasmus, parallelism, rhetorical questions, syllepsis, and zeugma) and Tropes (the major ones being simile, metaphor, personification, synecdoche, and metonymy). Rhetorical Figures simply do clever things with words but don’t actually twist them out of their original meaning. Tropes (trop in Latin means turn) actually twist things into new meanings: a person becomes a fox, a rose becomes a beautiful woman, a worker becomes a hand. Antithesis: juxtaposition of opposites. By putting opposites side by side, writers, like visual artists, can create powerful effects. Bright/dark, trivial/serious, funny/sad, tiny/huge, weak/strong, ugly/beautiful, hot/cold, winter/summer, wild/tame, young/old, hero/villain, male/female, yin/yang. Examples: fragile wildflower on rocky cliff; muscleman holding newborn baby, snow falling outside firelit room, Beauty and the Beast, lion lying down with lamb, roses blooming in the snow, oasis in desert, one candle burning in a dark church, ballerina poised on an elephant’s back. “Normally, we eat around 4 p.m. so when my sister is finished blowing peas out of her nose (another Thanksgiving tradition) the timing is just right to witness the sunset from beginning to end” (Meredith Moore). Often, the power of an entire essay (or novel) is based on antithesis (War and Peace). Mark Twain’s memoir Life on the Mississippi is magnificent largely because of the antitheses: darkness/light, slavery/freedom, land/water, mud/elegance, chaos/harmony, death/life, meanness/magnanimity, motionless/speed, obscurity/clarity. In his essay “Running the Table,” Frank Conroy opposes the loud, chaotic, and dangerous streets he walked as a fifteen-year-old with the hushed and spare upstairs room where he was initiated into the mathematical purity of the game of billiards. One way to put your finger on what makes a particular piece of literature powerful is to identify as many antitheses as you can. Chiasmus: this means cross, criss-cross, in Greek. If you put one sentence (or sentence part) under another, the words at the beginning of sentence A match the words at the end of sentence B; the words at the beginning of sentence B match the words at the end of sentence A, thus forming a cross. white snow Snow White Fair is foul, and foul is fair (Macbeth) Give me the courage to accept what I cannot change, and to change what I cannot accept (and the wisdom to know the difference) When the going gets tough, the tough get going. The first will be last and the last will be first. Let us never negotiate out of fear, but Let us never fear to negotiate (J. F. Kennedy) Parallelism (“matchingness”): a pair or series of similar things presented in similar grammatical form (if content matches, grammar should match). Which sounds better: a cold beer when it’s hot outside or a cold beer on a hot day? Which sounds better: their fur is soft, but they have deadly paws or their fur is soft, but their paws are deadly? Give him an inch, and he’ll take a mile. Cold hands, warm heart. It was a clever game for you, a painful wound for me (student Phillip). But what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6) “But would a candy maker use candies to murder?” “Ah, oui, Madame. The rope maker with his rope, the sweet maker with his soft centers” (Agatha Christie). God sleeps in the minerals, awakens in the plants, walks in the animals, and thinks in humans (Hindu scripture). Knock, and it shall be opened; ask and you shall receive. In dwelling, live close to the earth; in thinking, keep to the simple; in conflict, be fair and generous; in governing, don’t try to control; in work, do what you enjoy; in family life, be completely present (Tao Te Ching) Zeugma (means yoking in Greek): two different levels of reality--as Pat Olivier points out, often one animate and one inanimate) are yoked together to create a humorous or poignant effect. Belinda may lose “her heart, or necklace, at a ball” (Alexander Pope); “the little campground where I used to putter around reading three-day-old newspapers full of lies and watermelon seeds” (Edward Abbey); “She offered me a banana and an explanation” (Chris Lopez); “the businessmen left in high spirits and a Cadillac” (Steve Hecox); grandmother’s bed, full of secrets and cookie crumbs; “the town was halved by the railroad track, and the swift red river, and racial prejudice” (Maya Angelou); “a promise that must be kept, a price that must be paid, a dog that won’t let go” (movie ad for Stealing Harvard). If the direction is from animate to inanimate (human to object), the effect is often humorous: “The director and the cameraman [arrived] in foul moods and stylish leather jackets” (Martin Cruz Smith); if the direction is from inanimate to animate, the effect is often poignant: Route 66 was littered with beer cans and broken dreams. Simile: A comparison using the word LIKE or AS. Love is like a rollercoaster. He’s as nervous as a cat on a hot tin roof. “Numb as Novocaine, Seldom couldn’t speak” (Edward Abbey). “The fury and frustration of those years bubbled up like swamp gas” (Abbey). Metaphor: A comparison in which one thing IS another thing: that girl’s a train wreck! Love is a rollercoaster. He’s a real jewel. Personification: Non-human things are described as human: the moon scowled, the roses nodded their heads, Los Angeles panicked, the stars fled. “The three men hunched closer to the shrinking fire. The cold night crawled up their backs” (Abbey). Synecdoche: Using a part of something to represent the whole thing: a rancher hires hands; you get yourself some new wheels Metonymy: Using things/objects associated with something to represent that thing: The White House says; he spent the morning in meetings with record labels; the Oscars gathered for drinks; fifteen ballots walked out. Miscellaneous Diction: The kinds of words the writer characteristically uses, for example, old fashioned, slang, baby talk, elegant, simple, technical. Tone (like attitude): If the author were speaking this instead of writing it, what would his or her tone of voice be? You can ask yourself, what’s the author’s tone towards the reader? Examples: casual, kindly, hostile, ingratiating. What’s the author’s tone towards him- or herself? Examples: self-satisfied, self-deprecating, remorseful. What’s the author’s tone towards his or her subject matter? Examples: bitter, celebratory, curious, bored, fearful, nostalgic. What’s the author’s attitude towards the world? Example: see above. Structure (“plot”): The structure of a creative nonfiction piece. Examples: academic (“thesis-driven”), journey-based (“rambling”); chronological or achronological, collage, stream of consciousness, flashbacks. Rooms in a house, photos in a pile, exchanges of letters or emails, scenes from home movies, a deck of cards, a Monopoly game--any of these could provide the structure or plot. It could be mixed, for example written partly as poems. It could be written as an instruction manual or a recipe book. Anything goes! It’s creative nonfiction.