CONVENTION ROUNDUP
CONVENTION ROUNDUP
The big winner last night was Jesse Jackson. Twenty years ago, in a moment of sheer genius, he copyrighted the word “hope” when used in a political campaign, and will now collect ten cents every time Kerry/Edwards uses it. Cha-ching.
The big loser, the word “presumptive,” as Senator John Glenn put Kerry over the top as the official Democratic nominee for President.
The jury’s still out on what was cheesier: Kucinich’s “We will carry America for Kerry and Kerry will carry America for us,” or Elizabeth Edwards’ “John Kerry has something else in common with my dad: the right stuff.”
July 29th, 2004 at 4:51 pm
“Kerry will carry America for us”?
How much more un-democratic can you get?
July 29th, 2004 at 5:03 pm
Eh, that’s neither here nor there, I just didn’t like the whole onamatopeia (is that the word for sound-play?) that Dennis was going for…
July 29th, 2004 at 6:14 pm
I think “Dick Cheney needs a time-out”, spoken by by that 12-year-old girl, was the bizarre highlight.
July 29th, 2004 at 6:17 pm
That was two days ago, though.
July 29th, 2004 at 6:29 pm
Can i be your poetry consultant?
The word you’re looking for is, i think, alliteration.
July 29th, 2004 at 6:34 pm
I thought alliteration had to do with the same letters being used consecutively? like ku klux klan (that’s the first thing that popped into mind sadly,) but this more same sound used nearby. There has to be a word for that…
July 29th, 2004 at 6:51 pm
Onamatopiea is when words sound like what they represent. Splash, zing, squish etc. I think the word you’re looking for is rhyming. But then I studied music not English, so I could be talking out my a**.
July 29th, 2004 at 7:12 pm
Coelecanth,
You are exactly right!! Rhyming! This is so a “the simplest explanation is often the correct one” moment. I am going to sit in a corner with my dunce cap on….(you’re right about Onamatopiea, too…I should have studied music more intently.)
July 29th, 2004 at 7:16 pm
Yeah, I was gonna go with rhyming too. And I did study English.
July 29th, 2004 at 8:47 pm
One problem: it doesn’t rhyme. The device is called chiasmus.
July 29th, 2004 at 10:10 pm
In case any one else thought ugarte made that up:
chiasmus [ky-AZ-mus] (plural -mi), a figure of speech by which the order of the terms in the first of two parallel clauses is reversed in the second. This may involve a repetition of the same words (”Pleasure’s a sin, and sometimes sin’s a pleasure” –Byron) or just a reversed parallel between two corresponding pairs of ideas . . . . The figure is especially common in 18th century English poetry, but is also found in prose of all periods. It is named after the Greek letter chi (x), indicating a “criss-cross” arrangement of terms. Adjective: chiastic.
July 30th, 2004 at 12:56 am
Hmm. I thought we were defining the relationship between the words: “Kerry” and “Carry” which are homonyms, yes? (Ok, rhyme might be wrong.) Doesn’t “chiasmus” refer more to the syntax, i.e., the way the two words were used in the sentence?
hom·o·nym
n.
One of two or more words that have the same sound and often the same spelling but differ in meaning, such as bank (embankment) and bank (place where money is kept).
July 30th, 2004 at 1:00 am
Also, with a broad reading of the definition, “Kerry” and “carry” do rhyme:
rhyme also rime
n.
Correspondence of terminal sounds of words or of lines of verse.
July 30th, 2004 at 1:21 am
Yes, and boy did Dennis broadly read it. Cheesiness quotient? High. but he did not, and I repeat, did not bankrupt Cleveland.
July 31st, 2004 at 3:10 pm
But the rhetorical trick isn’t Kerry/carry. It is America-Kerry/Kerry-America. The rhyme is more a coincidence than a device.
August 2nd, 2004 at 9:03 pm
Ah, so you agree it’s a rhyme.