No matter how I look at the issue, I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens.

Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
speaking to the Senate Armed Services Committee.

 reluctant conclusion, implying that you either used to believe the other side or tried hard to believe it.

The two guys who run the military for the commander in chief—Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Admiral Mullen—have called for changing don’t ask don’t tell, the 17-year-old policy that allows gays to serve in the military so long as they don’t reveal their sexual preference. Some 13,500 gay and lesbian personnel have been discharged under the policy, including valuable Arabic translators.

Mullen’s testimony took the form of a reluctant conclusion, one of the most powerful argument techniques. It implies that, much as you’d like to agree with the opposition, facts or circumstances give you no choice. The reluctant conclusion contributes mightily to your eunoia, the audience’s belief in your objectivity. Imagine if Mullen had said, “Anyone with a brain and a heart should recognize that…” If you happen to disagree, then Mullen is accusing you of lacking a brain and a heart. Goodbye, civility. Instead, he said, “I cannot escape being troubled by the fact…”

The admiral’s testimony won’t get many conservatives behind a reversal, though. They have a good opposing argument: Don’t enforce a social change on a military that’s already under the stress of two wars. But then, conservatives had an even better argument when they opposed Harry Truman’s integration of the military during the Korean War, right after World War Two. Now, that was stressful. But Figaro can’t help but think that it was the American thing to do.

Do you want this book published
or just printed?

Angus Cameron, top editor at Little, Brown, to J.D. Salinger

reductio ad absurdum, “reduction to absurdity.” Also erotesis (eh-ro-TEE-sis), the rhetorical question.

 J.D. Salinger died Wednesday at age 91, almost six decades after his adolescent-angst novel, Catcher in the Rye, came out. Already something of a recluse, he said he didn’t want any publicity for the book; not even review copies.

Angus Cameron’s reply neatly reveals the difference between publishing a book and merely printing it. He deploys a reductio ad absurdum, an argument technique that boils the opponent’s argument down to its ludicrous core.

Salinger lived in extreme privacy in Cornish, New Hampshire, near Figaro’s neck of the woods. The townsfolk discouraged or even misled nosey types and journalists. Once, however, we were browsing in a local bookstore when an old man came in, bought a book, and quickly left. A friend of ours who lived in Cornish nodded toward the door and muttered, “That was J.D. Salinger.”

May he rest in the remotest part of heaven.

The dissent says that “ ‘speech’ ” refers to oral communications of human beings, and since corporations are not human beings they cannot speak. This is sophistry.

Justice Antony Scalia, footnote in a concurring opinion in Citizens United v. FEC

 synecdoche, the generalizing trope. From the Greek, meaning “swap.”

For the past century, federal law has prohibited corporations from using their own treasury to promote or trash a candidate. The Supremes yesterday upended Congress with a sweeping judgment: corporations have the same speech rights as people, and can spend their money on political speech without government interference.

Figaro is thrilled that one of the most important Supreme Court cases in a decade revolved around a synecdoche. This tricky trope takes a part or constituent of something and makes it stand for the whole. Or the reverse. “America won 15 golds in Canada” is a double synecdoche—“golds” stand for gold medals, and “America” stands for the athletes. Got it?

In the Supreme Court case, the question came down to whether a corporation—that potent mix of people and money—is, under the Constitution, a person. Their answer: yes. And so the synecdoche “I got screwed by my banker” takes on a richer, more literal meaning.

We urge you to buy protection.

Equal rights for Sarcasm –
Use the SarcMark.

Website for SarcMark

mycterismus (mik-ter-IS-mus), the sneer.  From the Greek, meaning “sneer.”

Questions get a mark, right? Even exclamations have a point! But poor sarcasm has gone unpunctuated—until now. A very earnest software developer offers a character that lets people know when you don’t mean what you say. For only $1.99, you can download the SarcMark (a symbol that, perhaps intentionally, seems to depict something being flushed down a toilet) and use it to end all your snarky sentences.

Personally, Figaro prefers his irony to remain ironic. Sarcasm marks have been absent from keyboards for a good reason. While an exclamation point amplifies a sentence, turning a holy cow into a HOLY COW!, a SarcMark undoes the sarcasm. The moment you say you’re being ironic, you aren’t.

On the other hand, unironic irony can become a form of irony, if it’s accompanied by an ironically ludicrous gesture. This is where the mycterismus comes in. A gesture or expression that shows contempt for the listener, it gets magnificent use in a Monty Python movie and in the routine that made Steve Martin famous: “Excuuuuuuuuusssssse meeeeeeeee.”

In other words, the SarcMark is a kind of emoticon. Most emoticons are free, and they’re absolutely worth the price. But while other emoticons show a smiley (or frowny) face, the SarcMark is more abstract. And abstract toilet art is worth a lot more than a smiley face.

NOT.

 O little town of Bethlehem                                                
How still we see thee lie

Christmas carol by Phillips Brooks

prosopopoeia (pro-so-po-PEE-a), the humanizer.

 Figaro’s favorite language sage, Brooks Clark, writes that the sweet little Christmas carol resulted from a bet made by a well-known preacher, Phillips Brooks:

“During the Christmas season of 1867, Brooks was looking for a special carol for the children of Philadelphia’s Holy Trinity Church to sing in their Christmas program, but he wasn’t satisfied with the choices available.  He bet his organist, Lewis R. Redner, that he could write a better one.  He retired to his study, where he wrote the words to O Little Town of Bethlehem in a single evening.”

The song talks to a city as if it were a person, employing the personification figure called prosopopoeia. Orators have been talking to inanimate objects or other species for millennia, with only a small percentage institutionalized for schizophrenia. The figure may seem strange today, but Figaro uses it often. For instance, he speaks colorfully to his computer whenever it freezes up.

Back to the Christmas carol: The organist, Lewis Redner, wrote the melody the night before the concert, when he woke up with the notes miraculously in his head. Brooks’s own inspiration came from Bethlehem itself. Two years before, while traveling to preach the midnight Christmas Eve service in the Church of the Nativity, Brooks stopped on a hillside overlooking the sleepy city while shepherds watched their flocks nearby.

What self-respecting preacher wouldn’t get a carol out of that?

Joy to all in the days to come, and let nothing you dismay.

This Year, Give Presence

Slogan for Advent Conspiracy

 antanaclasis (an-tan-AC-la-sis), the pun. From the Greek, meaning, more or less, “boomerang.”

The War on Christmas rages on. Congressional Democrats are pushing the health care vote all the way to Christmas Eve or beyond, thus proving that the multi-trillion-dollar bill is just a cover for the liberals’ assault on Jesus. Meanwhile, the defending army busily outs Christmasphobic stores and slams President Obama for preempting the sacred A Charlie Brown Christmas to order 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. As if that had anything to do with Christmas!

Meanwhile, a group of pastors has decided that the holiday’s true spirit may not lie in liturgically dancing beagles or clerks mumbling “Merry Christmas.”  The Advent Conspiracy urges people to spend a bit less of their credit cards and more of their time. Their slogan, “Give Presence,” constitutes a worthy use of an antanaclasis, which repeats the exact sound of a word while giving it a different meaning. For instance, “Call girl” is an antanaclasis of “Call, girl!”

The antanaclasis applies only to homonymic puns—words that sound exactly the same. Many years ago, Figaro got into a dispute with a co-worker who insisted that the only correct pronunciation of “harass” emphasized the first syllable. Figaro argued that “haRASS” was equally valid. At a meeting that afternoon, the annoying coworker attempted to correct Figaro’s grammar.

A colleague took her side: “She’s a good editor.”

“Yeah?” Figaro retorted. “She doesn’t know ‘harass’ from her elbow.”

This, dear reader, was a paronomasia, or near-pun. And it earned him a long lecture from the H.R. director. As if that had anything to do with Christmas.

I had moist eyes during Obama’s election day speech in Chicago. But let me tell you: he does not get it.

James Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies

reluctant conclusion, the eunoia enhancer; also anacoluthon (ah-na-co-LOO-thon), the grammar switcher.

Today’s quote employs one of Figaro’s favorite argument tools: the reluctant conclusion. You claim you used to be on the other side, but facts or circumstances forced you to change your mind.

The cool thing is, Hansen switches grammar while he switches sides. “I had moist eyes,” he says in the past tense. Then he changes to the present tense, “But let me tell you…” The last four words, “he does not get it” strike monosyllabically like a hand pounding a podium.

Figaro does hate that expression, though. How can we get it when “it” has no antecedent?

What Obama doesn’t get, according to Hansen is the impending apocalypse: “global chaos,” with a planet “in imminent danger of crashing.” Obama’s “politics as usual” won’t save us, Hansen says. But in America, politics is usual. We’re a republic, not a dictatorship. Hansen is a great preacher, but the sermon has to get beyond the choir.

 Snappy Answer: Does not get what?

You gonna get that,
Then I need the money.

Lady Gaga, lyrics from “Kaboom”

enthymeme (EN-thih-meme), the argument packet. From the Greek, meaning “something in the mind.”

Figaro loves a Lady, even a lady who personifies a foul-mouthed hooker. While we exercise a very broad definition of “lady” (and don’t even think there’s a pun in that), we’re especially enamored of ladies who use Aristotelian logic.

Lady Gaga does in her hit song what the philosopher did in his Rhetoric: both reduce the logical syllogism to the more succinct enthymeme.  The device takes a commonplace—a belief, value, attitude, or (in this case) desire—and uses it as a first step in convincing the audience.

Syllogism:

You desire my, uh, that.
Successful acquisition of that requires a quid pro quo.
Therefore, you must fulfill my need for money.

Gaga Enthymeme (English translation):

You intend to acquire that.
So you must pay money for that.

Aristotle understood that the middle line of a syllogism is painfully obvious, and therefore worth eliminating.

Similarly, Lady Gaga’s That needs no explicit antecedant. And Figaro is happy to avoid it.

Snappy Answer: I’ll see your That and raise you a This.

Take Warren Buffett. Investors read his annual Berkshire Hathaway Chairman’s Letter like it was Moses’ tablets from on high, mostly to enjoy his wit and wisdom. Well, okay, mostly to glean the secrets of the world’s savviest investor. But how many investment letters get quoted for decades afterward? Mr. Buffetts’ do, because he’s a wizard at figures—the rhetorical as well as the business kind.

For instance, in his 2004 letter he said that a timely investor is one who’s “fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.” That’s a first-class chiasmus, though Figaro doubts that he’d use the term.  “It’s far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price,” Buffett said. Another nice chiasmus.Try it yourself when you want your writing to stick out. It’s not a question of whether we’re against Google. It’s whether Google is against us.

Besides using snazzy ways to change the usual word order, Buffett also likes one of Figaro’s own favorite devices: taking clichés literally. Here’s a quote from a panel discussion he did in 2008: “I try to buy stock in businesses that are so wonderful that an idiot can run them. Because sooner or later, one will.” See what he did? He took the cliché, “an idiot can run it,” and imagined that it wasn’t a cliché at all. Why prefer something that an idiot can run, if an idiot will never run it?

Here’s another Buffet cliché-bender, from a talk he gave to MBA students in 2003: “I like to shoot fish in a barrel. But I like to do it after the water has run out.” Oldest cliché in the book. But Buffett was trying to illustrate that, in investing, he liked a sure thing to be even surer. And what’s a surer thing than fish in a barrel of water? Fish in a barrel without water.

When he wanted to illustrate how underlings tend to come up with projections that justify a CEO’s foolish acquisition, Buffett undermined the cliché, “the emperor has no clothes”: “Only in fairy tales are emperors told that they are naked.”

And Buffett knows how to define terms to get the upper hand in an argument. “Price is what you pay,” he said. “Value is what you get.” It reminds me of the late, lamented cartoon strip “Shoe,” when the son asks his journalist dad, “Why are you staring out the window? You should be typing.” Dad answers, “Typists type. Writers stare out windows.”

If you really want to achieve immortality, though, talk like Yogi Berra, the man who famously said “If you find a fork in the road, take it,” and “Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.” When you abandon logic to achieve a higher wisdom: that’s a figure called a yogiism. Warren Buffett is good at this, too. “Occasionally,” he said, “a man must rise above principles.” You have to love a man like that—and people do.

Easy for Figaro and Warren to say, right? Well, writing figuratively does take practice. One way to do it is to take an expression you admire and see how it varies from plain ordinary speech. Take a quote you like, and then write it as you’d usually say it. I call this technique “unwriting.” Take, for instance, another Buffett quote:

“Beware of geeks bearing formulas.”

Next, unwrite it:

“You should be skeptical of number crunchers and their computer models.”

Now ask yourself how Buffett’s quote varies from the unwritten version. As he likes to do, he twisted a cliché—“Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.” The old saying probably occurred to him when he was thinking of computer geeks. Hmmm. Beware of geeks… Beware of Greeks! Bearing…um, formulas! As I say, it takes practice.

Meanwhile, you’ve already learned one of the secrets to being Warren Buffett: speak figuratively. All you have to do to complete the picture is to become an investment wizard and make more money than anybody in the world. Personally, Figaro hasn’t even figured out mutual funds yet. But you have to start somewhere.

Here’s a little news flash for your Department of Media: Superman’s parents chose life and he was adopted in small-town USA by real Americans who run our factories, harvest our meat-bearing animals, and wave Old Glory down at the courthouse and the churches, not in Washington, D.C. by cynical power-brokers and liberal scientists.

Steve Aydt, second-place entry in Slate.com’s “Write Like Sarah Palin” contest

 synecdoche, the generalizing trope.  From the Greek, meaning “swap.”

 Yeah, Figaro said he wouldn’t write about Palin anymore, but how could we resist this? Slate’s contest beautifully illustrates the political art of the synecdoche, the trope that makes an individual stand for a whole group, or a species for a genus, or vice versa. Agribusiness becomes the hard-working farmer watching over his amber waves of grain. The military shrinks down to one brave soldier. Wealthy heirs in Ivy League clubs miraculously morph into small businessmen struggling in the face of the capital gains tax.

Steve Aydt nailed it. What the Liberal Media don’t understand is how REAL these fake people are. The synecdoche gains great power in an unrhetorical society, because people fail to see it or what it is: a trope. So Sarah Palin is no cynical rhetorician. She’s telling it like it is. And what’s “It”? Whatever stereotype that warms your red-blooded American heart and doesn’t trouble your hard-working, beer-drinking mind.

Snappy Answer: Put that in your snowmobile and smoke it.