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Welcome to Rhetorosaurus
What is Rhetorosaurus? It is, to our knowledge, the largest database of rhetorical terms anywhere. The core of the project can be found on the Dictionary page (see left). Our interest is in investigating rhetorical terms, especially those of antiquity, for the light that they shed on questions within literary theory, the understanding of persuasion, and wider issues of linguistics and cognition.
From school or college, many will remember such terms as “metaphor” and “personification”. Some may recall “metonymy”. These are indeed figures of major importance which receive extended treatment on the Articles Blog page, but what may not be realised is that there are hundreds of such rhetorical terms, figures or devices. It is these which we list, explore and classify.
What are rhetorical terms? To simplify greatly, they denote any use of a word, phrase or construction that departs from “plain”, “normal” or “straightforward” language use which occurs in an identifiable way to achieve a persuasive, literary or poetic effect. They are often called “rhetorical devices.”
A distinction is thus made between literal (the “plain” and “normal” mentioned) and figurative language. However, such distinctions can be and have been contested on theoretical grounds. Further discussion of such issues takes place on the Articles Blog page.
The departure from normal use often occurs either through deviation or distortion, or through parallelism or patterning beyond “normal” expectations. The terms have historically often been divided into two groups –
Trope - use of a word, phrase or image in a way not intended in its usual use
Scheme – change in the standard word order or pattern
Through time, there has been some terminological confusion and contradiction regarding the high-level generic categories, particularly ”figure of speech” and “figure of thought”. In normal usage, metaphor, metonymy, etc. are often referred to as figures of speech, but many theorists identify the schemes more closely with figures of speech, and would consider metaphor, etc. as tropes, and as such, figures of thought.
The methodology for inclusion on the database is loose and inclusive, rather than strict and exclusive – at the core we have devices of rhetoric, such things as are often termed figures of speech, figures of thought, schemes or tropes. I have been particularly keen to include terms from the Ancient Greek, the Roman, Latin and Latinisations of the Greek, and those of the various Renaissance cultures (particularly Elizabethan England). There have been attempts by some theorists at Anglicisation of some of the ancient terms, and many of these are included.
The database has a double focus – on persuasive and argumentative techniques and devices, and on the literary or poetic, though from some points of view, any such hard-and-fast division is not theoretically innocent. I have recently tried to include as many terms for argumentative fallacies or ploys as I can, again with a bias to terms of the ancient world.
As well as the core of figures, etc., some terms from the wider fields of poetics and linguistics are included, but the database is not intended to be a dictionary of these areas.
Though the methodology for inclusion is loose, we expect to improve its consistency, and expect that the developing classification systems will bring much rigour to bear on the raw material of the database. At present the taxonomic and classification issues are indicated by the Tags page, but there is ongoing work in this area.
The charm of obscure, unfamiliar and forgotten terminology is one of the attractions of the site, but as well as this we believe that an ongoing investigation of taxonomies, classifications and categorisations of the devices, figures, schemes and tropes of rhetoric can provide insights and structure within literary and rhetorical theory, and play a part in improving the rigour of such disciplines, which are often impeded by inadequate or vague terminology. More widely, awareness of the rich resources of rhetoric could enhance appreciation and criticism of discourses as seemingly disparate as poetic text and political speech.
We hope you enjoy Rhetorosaurus.
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