Monthly Archives: October 2004
me and my big mouth
So given that I seem to have pissed off some people on C18-L, now what do I do? I was not as polite as I could have been in pointing out the well-established ALL CAPS IS SHOUTING convention. However, the response to what I said is way out of proportion. I will wait before I respond at all. As the comments to my previous entry indicate, graduate students and younger scholars are put off by the kind of animosity often displayed on listservs. I know I was when I was a grad student.
I think I will apologize for the nature of my original post but clarify that the all caps convention applies to Internet communication (and has for a long time), not to all forms of writing. One of the C18-L correspondents seems to be confused about the convention, citing eighteenth-century poet Alexander Pope’s use of all caps as a defense. I am also toying with the idea of joking like this: “To avoid confusion, all future ad hominem attacks upon me will please use the phrase ‘ethical onanist.’ This is what is printed on my business cards, and my chair says the department can’t pay to have new cards printed up with the perversely brilliant phrase ‘moral masturbator’ on them.”
I’m open to suggestions. Please advise.
apparently i’m a “right thinking moral masturbator”
Or at least that’s what one subscriber to C18-L says.
Why, oh why, did I even try to point out basic rules of civil behavior? You would think scholars of the eighteenth century (a period known for its conduct books) would have a more sophisticated understanding of such matters.
“synecdoche” defined
Bear with me. I’ll come back to this later. From the Oxford English Dictionary:
synecdoche
A figure by which a more comprehensive term is used for a less comprehensive or vice vers’; as whole for part or part for whole, genus for species or species for genus, etc. Formerly sometimes used loosely or vaguely, and not infrequently misexplained.
The definition from Wikipedia is pretty good:
Synecdoche is a kind of metonymy in which:
- A part of something is used for the whole,
- The whole is used for a part,
- The species is used for the genus,
- The genus is used for the species, or
- The stuff of which something is made is used for the thing.
Some common examples of synecdoche:
- A part of something is used for the whole
- “hands” to refer to workers, “head” to refer to cattle, “threads” to refer to clothing, “wheels” for “car”, “mouths to feed” to refer to hungry people
The whole is used for a part
- “the police” for a handful of officers, the “smiling year” for “spring”, “the Pentagon” for the top generals in the Pentagon building
The species is used for the genus
- “cutthroat” for “assassin”, “kleenex” for “facial tissue”, “castle” is used for “home”,
The genus is used for the species
- “creature” for “man”, “personal computer” for “IBM-compatible personal computer”, “colored” for a particular color
The stuff of which something is made is used for the thing
- “hickory” for “baseball bat”, “copper” for “penny”, “boards” for “stage”, “ivories” for “piano keys”, “plastic” for “credit card”
Synecdoche, as well as other forms of metonymy, is one of the most common ways to characterize a fictional character. Frequently, someone will be consistently described by a single body part or feature, such as the eyes, which comes to represent their person.
Also, sonnets and other forms of (erotic) love poetry frequently use synecdoches to characterize the beloved in terms of individual body parts rather than a whole, coherent self. This practice is especially common in the Petrarchan sonnet, where the idealised beloved is often described part by part, from head to toe.
As I said, I’ll probably be coming back to this concept.
eighteenth-century letter days
I have been searching my notes in vain for reference to a practice I remember reading about.
I can remember learning that in the eighteenth century Anglo-American world, members of a religious community would gather to listen to letters from abroad (concerning spiritual matters) being read out loud.
Am I imagining this, or is this a well-known practice that somehow slipped below the radar of my note-taking habits?
Cross posted at C18-L