Catachresis
{{Short description|Rhetorical misuse of a term}}
{{Distinguish|catechesis}}
{{Wiktionary}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=December 2019}}
Catachresis (from Greek {{lang|grc|κατάχρησις}}, "misuse"), originally meaning a semantic misuse or error, is also the name given to many different types of figures of speech in which a word or phrase is being applied in a way that significantly departs from conventional (or traditional) usage.{{cite book|author=Anshuman Sharma|title=The Impact – The Art of Communicating Eloquently|date=16 April 2014|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Vsro-gP1spMC&pg=PA78|publisher=Anshuman Sharma|isbn=978-1-105-99521-7|page=78}} Examples of the original meaning include using "militate" for "mitigate", "chronic" for "severe", "travesty" for "tragedy", "anachronism" for "anomaly", "alibi" for "excuse", etc. As a rhetorical figure, catachresis may signify an unexpected or implausible metaphor.{{Cite book |last=Lanham |first=Richard A. |title=A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms |publisher=University of California Press |year=1991 |isbn=0-520-07669-9 |edition=2nd |location=Berkeley |pages=31}}
Variant definitions
There are various characterizations of catachresis found in the literature.
Examples
Dead people in a graveyard being referred to as inhabitants is an example of catachresis.{{cite book|author=Jonathan Arac|title=Impure Worlds: The Institution of Literature in the Age of the Novel|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1ldJNr0k--4C&pg=PA143|year=2011|publisher=Fordham Univ Press|isbn=978-0-8232-3178-2|page=143}}
Example from Alexander Pope's Peri Bathous, Or the Art of Sinking in Poetry:
Masters of this [catachresis] will say,:Mow the beard,
:Shave the grass,
:Pin the plank,
:Nail my sleeve.Pope, Peri Bathous, Or the Art of Sinking in Poetry, x
Use in literature
Catachresis is often used to convey extreme emotion or alienation. It is prominent in baroque literature and, more recently, in dadaist and surrealist literature.{{citation needed|date=May 2022}}
Use in philosophy and criticism
In Jacques Derrida's ideas of deconstruction, catachresis refers to the original incompleteness that is a part of all systems of meaning. He proposes that metaphor and catachresis are tropes that ground philosophical discourse.Clarification needed: the tradition of Sausserian linguistics in which Derrida works holds that the relation between all signifiers and their signifieds is an arbitrary one.{{citation needed|date=May 2022}}
Postcolonial theorist Gayatri Spivak applies this word to "master words" that claim to represent a group, e.g., women or the proletariat, when there are no "true" examples of "woman" or "proletarian". In a similar way, words that are imposed upon people and are deemed improper{{by whom|date=May 2022}} thus denote a catachresis, a word with an arbitrary{{clarification needed|date=May 2022}} connection to its meaning.{{citation needed|date=May 2022}}
See also
Reading
- {{cite book | last = Ghiazza| first = Silvana | year = 2007 | title = Le figure retoriche | publisher = Zanichelli | location = Bologna | isbn = 978-88-08-16742-2 | pages = 350}}
- {{cite book | last = Morton| first = Stephen | year = 2003 | title = Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak | url = https://archive.org/details/gayatrichakravor00mort_058| url-access = limited| publisher = Routledge | location = London | isbn = 0-415-22934-0 | pages = [https://archive.org/details/gayatrichakravor00mort_058/page/n190 176]}}
- {{cite book | last = Smyth | first = Herbert Weir | year = 1920 | title = Greek Grammar | publisher = Harvard University Press | location = Cambridge, Massachusetts | isbn = 0-674-36250-0 | pages = 677}}