Writing Help 129 | - Freelance Writer
Mar 29, 2013 | #1
Using Advanced Rhetorical Devices to Surprise and Delight
Another of my favorite rhetorical terms, probably because of its catchy name, pleonasm is another device makes literary capital out of redundancy. As we have discussed elsewhere, the dominant school of style in writing is focused on the condensation of language into strong, lean forms, without superfluous verbiage. Any words deemed unnecessary or redundant (note the redundancy in my own statement there) should be edited out of existence. This is a fine statement in general, since many writers use far too many words and thus ruin the effectiveness of their message, but if it is too rigorously applied, creative prose ends up looking like print from science texts, and the life is sucked out of the literary work.
Pleonasm is generally considered (when it is considered at all) to be a synonym of redundancy, tautology, logorrhea, verbosity, and every other word and term that suggests something is saying something in a roundabout or repetitive way. More strictly, I would only call a construction pleonastic when it has two elements that reflect each other exactly, or almost exactly, each making the other redundant. As a result, thinking back to the article on redundancy from a previous series, constructions like free gift and over exaggerated are pairs of words that overlap to such an extent that the adjective part of the pair is unnecessary. After all, all gifts are free, and exaggeration already contains the idea of over in itself. As a result, these phrases can be considered pleonastic, but I would prefer to reserve the term for redundant constructions that create more interesting effects, or that serve some purpose.
There are some cases where redundancy is helpful, rather than harmful, to communication. The above examples are widely considered errors, or at least poor choices, in standard English writing. There are times, however, when pleonasm can be very effective. There are certain stock phrases, word pairs really, that are pleonastic to the core, such as law and order, and leaps and bounds. These have become staples in our language, and continue to be used widely and frequently, despite their redundancy. The origin of these commonly associated word pairs rests in the birth of modern English, when authors were writing documents in a highly multilingual society, and were unsure whether their audience would understand a given term. So, to avoid confusion, they would list two terms, one a native English term, and the other the equivalent term with Latin or other foreign roots. In the above examples, order and bounds both have Latin roots, whereas law and leaps are both native English words. Thus, the redundancy served an important purpose, and these phrases were so widely used that they remain with us to this day, still sounding right despite the unnecessary repetition.
I find pleonasm useful when conversing with people who speak English as a second language, as well as students who are not familiar with certain terminology. In both cases, pleonasm allows you to introduce the appropriate term as well as its "translation" into more common English terms, ensuring that you are understood, and allowing your interlocutor or conversation partner to learn something new. Pleonasm can also be effectively used to convey the importance of something, as in the following example: "This letter absolutely, positively, must arrive in Venice on Friday." Here, absolutely and positively are both pleonastic, as the word must conveys that this is not an optional thing, but something which has to happen. However, note how much more emphatic the statement is with the additional words. The sentence might be more concise if we removed the pleonasm, but it would no be so forceful, and the point might well be lost.
Pleonasm
Another of my favorite rhetorical terms, probably because of its catchy name, pleonasm is another device makes literary capital out of redundancy. As we have discussed elsewhere, the dominant school of style in writing is focused on the condensation of language into strong, lean forms, without superfluous verbiage. Any words deemed unnecessary or redundant (note the redundancy in my own statement there) should be edited out of existence. This is a fine statement in general, since many writers use far too many words and thus ruin the effectiveness of their message, but if it is too rigorously applied, creative prose ends up looking like print from science texts, and the life is sucked out of the literary work.
Pleonasm is generally considered (when it is considered at all) to be a synonym of redundancy, tautology, logorrhea, verbosity, and every other word and term that suggests something is saying something in a roundabout or repetitive way. More strictly, I would only call a construction pleonastic when it has two elements that reflect each other exactly, or almost exactly, each making the other redundant. As a result, thinking back to the article on redundancy from a previous series, constructions like free gift and over exaggerated are pairs of words that overlap to such an extent that the adjective part of the pair is unnecessary. After all, all gifts are free, and exaggeration already contains the idea of over in itself. As a result, these phrases can be considered pleonastic, but I would prefer to reserve the term for redundant constructions that create more interesting effects, or that serve some purpose.There are some cases where redundancy is helpful, rather than harmful, to communication. The above examples are widely considered errors, or at least poor choices, in standard English writing. There are times, however, when pleonasm can be very effective. There are certain stock phrases, word pairs really, that are pleonastic to the core, such as law and order, and leaps and bounds. These have become staples in our language, and continue to be used widely and frequently, despite their redundancy. The origin of these commonly associated word pairs rests in the birth of modern English, when authors were writing documents in a highly multilingual society, and were unsure whether their audience would understand a given term. So, to avoid confusion, they would list two terms, one a native English term, and the other the equivalent term with Latin or other foreign roots. In the above examples, order and bounds both have Latin roots, whereas law and leaps are both native English words. Thus, the redundancy served an important purpose, and these phrases were so widely used that they remain with us to this day, still sounding right despite the unnecessary repetition.
I find pleonasm useful when conversing with people who speak English as a second language, as well as students who are not familiar with certain terminology. In both cases, pleonasm allows you to introduce the appropriate term as well as its "translation" into more common English terms, ensuring that you are understood, and allowing your interlocutor or conversation partner to learn something new. Pleonasm can also be effectively used to convey the importance of something, as in the following example: "This letter absolutely, positively, must arrive in Venice on Friday." Here, absolutely and positively are both pleonastic, as the word must conveys that this is not an optional thing, but something which has to happen. However, note how much more emphatic the statement is with the additional words. The sentence might be more concise if we removed the pleonasm, but it would no be so forceful, and the point might well be lost.