Comments on: CONVENTION ROUNDUP

By: pearatty

pearatty — Tue, 03 Aug 2004 01:03:19 +0000

Ah, so you agree it’s a rhyme.

By: Ugarte

Ugarte — Sat, 31 Jul 2004 19:10:15 +0000

But the rhetorical trick isn’t Kerry/carry. It is America-Kerry/Kerry-America. The rhyme is more a coincidence than a device.

By: Dawn Summers

Dawn Summers — Fri, 30 Jul 2004 05:21:54 +0000

Yes, and boy did Dennis broadly read it. Cheesiness quotient? High. but he did not, and I repeat, did not bankrupt Cleveland.

By: pearatty

pearatty — Fri, 30 Jul 2004 05:00:14 +0000

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.

By: pearatty

pearatty — Fri, 30 Jul 2004 04:56:19 +0000

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).

By: Dawn Summers

Dawn Summers — Fri, 30 Jul 2004 02:10:17 +0000

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.

By: ugarte

ugarte — Fri, 30 Jul 2004 00:47:40 +0000

One problem: it doesn’t rhyme. The device is called chiasmus.

By: pearatty

pearatty — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:16:39 +0000

Yeah, I was gonna go with rhyming too. And I did study English.

By: Dawn Summers

Dawn Summers — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:12:14 +0000

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.)

By: coelecanth

coelecanth — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 22:51:16 +0000

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**.

By: Dawn Summers

Dawn Summers — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 22:34:00 +0000

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…

By: annika

annika — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 22:29:08 +0000

Can i be your poetry consultant?

The word you’re looking for is, i think, alliteration.

By: Dawn Summers

Dawn Summers — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 22:17:33 +0000

That was two days ago, though.

By: Yaron

Yaron — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 22:14:01 +0000

I think “Dick Cheney needs a time-out”, spoken by by that 12-year-old girl, was the bizarre highlight.

By: Dawn Summers

Dawn Summers — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 21:03:16 +0000

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…

By: candace

candace — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 20:51:46 +0000

“Kerry will carry America for us”?

How much more un-democratic can you get?