I’ve just finished work – you sort of know what I do, I write about it on this blog and I must write more often – it’s a great way of thinking out loud and trying to make sense of things.
So anyway, I’ve just finished work, and as usual I start thinking, it’s what my job helps me to do, it’s working with all these talented and bright people – I love it.
I was thinking about a photoblog post I did yesterday of a staircase, with the title “Stairway up to the sky” – that’s a pleonasm, right? I mean if it’s the sky, it’s got to be up, hasn’t it?
Now, I’m in no way a purist in language terms, although a great deal of my academic studies has meant that I have had to lean in that direction, I nevertheless am not a language snob, although I can recognize and appreciate good language usage and I do like that.
We all tend to have certain parasites that leach into our everyday language use – love it or hate it, a lot of it is due to just not taking care and habit, but can be quite amusing when we sit back and think about it.
We are eager consumers, passively or actively, of both pleonasms and oxymorons – especially as we are bombarded by the advertising industry’s noble quest of deforming all forms of language, whether written or spoken – and they do a good job of it, don’t they.
Some of it is just downright confusing, whilst some is irritating, or at best laughable – but a great deal of it we absorb without question.
There is a great track by The disposable Heroes of Hiphopricy (what a great band they were / are) calles “Television – the drug of the nation”. It really is a brilliant word-smithy hip-hop track which vilifies the drug, as they term it, of television. In this track they mention the use of oxymorons in advertising that is used on tv – citing such examples as “Fresh frozen”, “light but filling” and “virtually spotless”.
I mean, how can it be virtually spotless – it either is or it isn’t spotless and this is largely how oxymorons work. Even the word ‘Oxymoron’ is an oxymoron, ‘Oxy’ meaning keen, sharp, acid and moron, meaning a stupid person – keenly stupid! – is his a joke or something?
You’ve guessed it, an oxymoron is a figure of speech where two contradicting propositions or opposite terms or ideas are combined to create a rhetorical effect by paradoxical means. Let’s not get lost in this and have a look at some more examples of oxymorons :
Jumbo shrimp – err a shrimp is small isn’t it?
Uninvited guest …
Guestimation – you either estimate by calculating using solid data or proven methods or just guess … I would have thought.
Virtual reality – well come on, it’s either virtual or reality, isn’t it?
Accidentally on purpose – yep.
Agree to disagree …
Unacceptable solution
Genuine immitation wood
I could go on all night and I hope that you can add to this list through the comments, some are very tongue-in-cheek, whilst others are just non-logical, but we have all heard them and used them at one time or another – they are a feature of language.
Pleonasms, on the other hand, are when we use redundancy in language – as if we’ve won the battle, but we just keep on fighting, adding words, that frankly add nothing in terms of linguistic value – I’ll repeat it again, there is just no value … see what I did there.
IS to “go down below” as in a ship a pleonasm? As we would have to go down to get below, could just “go below” work without being too ambiguous?
Consider, “Free gifts”, “first introductions” and some people have annual meetings every year – I kid you not.
Some examples occur when mixed languages are used, for example when the original word from a foreign language is used by another – “Chai tea” – Chai means tea in Hindi, so it’s Tea-tea … Americans say “Paris France” what there’s another, oh yes, in Texas – let’s move on … Ah, yes, there’s “all together”, “end result” and “final finality”, not forgetting “absolutely essential”, “advanced warning” and an “affirmative yes”.
A lot of acronyms are a fertile territory for pleonasms too, such as:
ATM machine, HIV virus, RAM memory, LCD display, ISBN number, PIN number and UPC code.
In some ways, both pleonasms and oxymorons are there to make us think (or not) – well that’s my take on it anyway – bit of a linguistic unexpected surprise that only a wise fool would challenge.
And anyway, both oxymorons and pleonasms are infinitely preferably to double negatives, I don’t no none that are acceptable, and heaven forbid mixed metaphors – and as Al Gore put it, “A leopard can’t change his stripes”.
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