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The metaphoric meaning of tornado is inexact: one might understand that 'Pat is powerfully destructive' through the paraphrand of physical and emotional destruction; another person might understand the metaphor as 'Pat can spin out of control'. In the latter case, the paraphier of 'spinning motion' has become the paraphrand 'psychological spin ...
Ad hominem – rebutting an argument by attacking the character, motive, or other attribute of the person making it rather than the substance of the argument itself. Adianoeta – a phrase carrying two meanings: an obvious meaning and a second, more subtle and ingenious one (more commonly known as double entendre).
Also apophthegm. A terse, pithy saying, akin to a proverb, maxim, or aphorism. aposiopesis A rhetorical device in which speech is broken off abruptly and the sentence is left unfinished. apostrophe A figure of speech in which a speaker breaks off from addressing the audience (e.g., in a play) and directs speech to a third party such as an opposing litigant or some other individual, sometimes ...
Hypophora: answering one's own rhetorical question at length. Illeism: the act of referring to oneself in the third person instead of first person. Innuendo: having a hidden meaning in a sentence that makes sense whether it is detected or not. Irony: use of word in a way that conveys a meaning opposite to its usual meaning. [18]
Synecdoche is a rhetorical trope and a kind of metonymy—a figure of speech using a term to denote one thing to refer to a related thing. [9] [10]Synecdoche (and thus metonymy) is distinct from metaphor, [11] although in the past, it was considered a sub-species of metaphor, intending metaphor as a type of conceptual substitution (as Quintilian does in Institutio oratoria Book VIII).
In any communication, in any medium or format, "subtext" is the underlying or implicit meaning that, while not explicitly stated, is understood by an audience.[1]The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as "an underlying and often distinct theme in a conversation, piece of writing, etc.", [2] while according to Merriam-Webster, subtext is "the implicit or metaphorical meaning (as of a literary ...
In his 1990 book Words with Power, Frye proposed the literary device of metaphor to be a method of inciting identification in the reader. [10] Frye said that a metaphor not only identifies one thing with another, but both things with the reader, creating an experience of identification which merges the reader with the text. [12]
In contemporary literary studies, a theme is a central topic, subject, or message within a narrative. [1] Themes can be divided into two categories: a work's thematic concept is what readers "think the work is about" and its thematic statement being "what the work says about the subject". [2]