Catachresis
Catachresis (from Greek κατάχρησις, "misuse"), originally meaning a semantic misuse or error, is also the name given to many different types of figures of speech in which a word or phrase is being applied in a way that significantly departs from conventional (or traditional) usage.[1] Examples of the original meaning include using "militate" for "mitigate", "chronic" for "severe", "travesty" for "tragedy", "anachronism" for "anomaly", "alibi" for "excuse", etc. As a rhetorical figure, catachresis may signify an unexpected or implausible metaphor.[2]
Variant definitions
[edit]There are various characterizations of catachresis found in the literature.
| Definition | Example |
|---|---|
| Crossing categorical boundaries with words, because there otherwise would be no suitable word.[3][4] | The sustainers of a chair being referred to as legs. |
| Replacing an expected word with another, half rhyming (or a partly sound-alike) word, with an entirely different meaning from what one would expect (cf malapropism, Spoonerism, aphasia).[5] | I'm ravished! for "I'm ravenous!" or for "I'm famished!" "They build a horse" instead of they build a house. |
| The strained use of an already existing word or phrase.[6] | "Tis deepest winter in Lord Timon's purse" – Shakespeare, Timon of Athens |
| The replacement of a word with a more ambiguous synonym (cf euphemism).[7] | Saying job-seeker instead of "unemployed". |
Examples
[edit]Dead people in a graveyard being referred to as inhabitants is an example of catachresis.[8]
Example from Alexander Pope's Peri Bathous, Or the Art of Sinking in Poetry:
Masters of this [catachresis] will say,
- Mow the beard,
- Shave the grass,
- Pin the plank,
- Nail my sleeve.[9]
Use in literature
[edit]Catachresis is often used to convey extreme emotion or alienation. It is prominent in baroque literature and, more recently, in dadaist and surrealist literature.[citation needed]
Use in philosophy and criticism
[edit]In Jacques Derrida's ideas of deconstruction, catachresis refers to the original incompleteness that is a part of all systems of meaning. He proposes that metaphor and catachresis are tropes that ground philosophical discourse.[10][citation needed]
Postcolonial theorist Gayatri Spivak applies this word to "master words" that claim to represent a group, e.g., women or the proletariat, when there are no "true" examples of "woman" or "proletarian". In a similar way, words that are imposed upon people and are deemed improper[by whom?] thus denote a catachresis, a word with an arbitrary[clarification needed] connection to its meaning.[citation needed]
See also
[edit]Reading
[edit]- Ghiazza, Silvana (2007). Le figure retoriche. Bologna: Zanichelli. p. 350. ISBN 978-88-08-16742-2.
- Morton, Stephen (2003). Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. London: Routledge. pp. 176. ISBN 0-415-22934-0.
- Smyth, Herbert Weir (1920). Greek Grammar. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. p. 677. ISBN 0-674-36250-0.
References
[edit]- ^ Anshuman Sharma (16 April 2014). The Impact – The Art of Communicating Eloquently. Anshuman Sharma. p. 78. ISBN 978-1-105-99521-7.
- ^ Lanham, Richard A. (1991). A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms (2nd ed.). Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 31. ISBN 0-520-07669-9.
- ^ Max Black discusses this phenomenon at some length, designating them catachrestic substitution metaphors: Black, M., Models and Metaphors: Studies in Language and Philosophy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1962).
- ^ Pierre Fontanier, Les Figures du discours (Paris: Flammarion, 1977 [orig. 1821–1830]), p. 214.
- ^ "Henry Peachum., The Garden of Eloquence (1593): Tropes, part Tropes, Catachresis". Perseus.tufts.edu. Retrieved 13 May 2013.
- ^ John Van Sickle (29 December 2010). Virgil's Book of Bucolics, the Ten Eclogues Translated into English Verse: Framed by Cues for Reading Aloud and Clues for Threading Texts and Themes. JHU Press. p. 18. ISBN 978-0-8018-9961-4.
- ^ Paul Maurice Clogan (1 January 1997). Historical Inquiries. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 19. ISBN 978-0-8476-8674-2.
- ^ Jonathan Arac (2011). Impure Worlds: The Institution of Literature in the Age of the Novel. Fordham Univ Press. p. 143. ISBN 978-0-8232-3178-2.
- ^ Pope, Peri Bathous, Or the Art of Sinking in Poetry, x
- ^ Clarification needed: the tradition of Sausserian linguistics in which Derrida works holds that the relation between all signifiers and their signifieds is an arbitrary one.