Assignments

Week One: Rhetorical Definitions

Metaphor is defined as one thing described as something else. Something is conceived of figuratively rather than as a literal representation An example might be referring to New York City as the “Big Apple” to describe its importance and stature in the world. Metaphors invite comparisons between things often through the use of symbols to express a thought, concept, idea, point of view in a figurative way.

Summer in the city/Heat

Metonymy is the substitution of terms suggesting an actual relationship. The substitution can be of a causal, spatial or chronological nature. Examples are cause instead of effect, instrument instead of agent, container instead of contents, replacing an object by its destination, etc. Depicting a question mark (for help) on a drop of paint , the drop of paint being associated with the action of painting .

I am parked out back

Synecdoche, where a part is substituted for the whole. For example, the abstract notion of music might be represented by a note.

Lend me your ears

Hyperbole is exaggeration for emphasis, used to make an object more prominent. This technique is valuable when you must clearly distinguish among otherwise similar objects or concepts. Exaggerating the size of an object is the most common form of this figure. Two specific forms of this figure are exaggeration and anticipation Exaggeration consists of emphasising part of the character or of amplifying an emotion or a reaction, such as a character jumping to the ceiling to express pain. Anticipation is used in animation as a way of exaggerating a preliminary action in order to give the audience a cue about the main action to follow e.g. exaggerating the part of the body participating in the action such as the starting posture for a running character .

Puerto Rican Day Parade

Visual pun is the use of symbols to suggest two or more meanings or different associations. We can distinguish the literal pun where the key symbols should create several meanings with each reflecting the original message, from the suggestive pun where the multiple meanings must be able to bring extra information. The comparative pun is created by the process of comparison which produces new interpretation for the pun.

Choice /Fork in the road

Personification s giving human traits (qualities, feelings, action, or characteristics) to non-living objects (things, colors, qualities, or ideas). Example: a smiling moon, a jovial sun

Sad, grey day/ Tears

Ellipsis is the suppression of some communication elements. This is a very common technique in which some elements of the design are deleted, leaving the concept at the centre of the design space.

Neglect/ peeling wall

Accent is a figure that describes the use of colour to highlight objects in a predominantly black and white environment.

Roofs

Antithesis is the juxtaposition of contrasting ideas, often in parallel structure. The opposition in antithesis can reside either in the words or the ideas or both. Oxymoron is the yoking of two terms which are ordinarily contradictory.

Business Men

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