Abstract

In his essay The Function of Rhetorical Study at the Present Time, J. Hillis Miller remarks: the recognition that all language, even language that seems purely referential or conceptual, is figurative language and an exploration of the consequences of that view for the interpretation of literature represent, it seems to me, one of the major frontiers of literary study today (13). This view of language also represents one of the major frontiers of composition study. To connect this view of language to the study of composition, I propose that a theory of can be a means of relating composition theory to literary theory. More specifically, I would like to suggest that the four metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony - can provide a conceptual framework for the composing process and a guide to critical reading. Tropes have developed into an explanatory power in a great many disciplines, including rhetoric, linguistics, philosophy, history, and literary theory. Rhetoricians have catalogued and defined a large number of these tropes, four of which - metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony - have been considered the most important. Kenneth Burke labeled these the master tropes