Trope
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- For other uses, see Trope (disambiguation).
The term trope has a number of meanings in the fields of linguistics, literature, philosophy, sociology, and music.
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[edit] Linguistics
In linguistics, trope is a rhetorical figure of speech that consists of a play on words, i.e., using a word in a way other than what is considered its literal or normal form. The other major category of figures of speech is the scheme, which involves changing the pattern of words in a sentence.
Trope comes from the Greek word, tropos, which means a "turn". We can imagine a trope as a way of turning a word away from its normal meaning, or turning it into something else.
[edit] Examples
- metonymy — a trope through proximity or correspondence, for example referring to actions of the US President as "actions of the White House".
- irony — creating a trope through implying the opposite of the standard meaning, such as describing poverty as "good times".
- metaphor — an explanation of an object or idea through juxaposition of disparate things with a similar characteristic, such as describing a courageous person as having a "heart of oak".
- synecdoche — related to metonymy and metaphor, creates a play on words by referring to the whole with the name of a part, such as "hired hands" for workers; referring to a part with the name of the whole, such as "the law" for police officers; referring to the general with the specific, such as "bread" for food; referring to the specific with the general, such as "cat" for a lion; or referring to an object with the material it is made from, such as "bricks and mortar" for a building.
[edit] Literature
In literature, a trope is a familiar and repeated symbol, meme, theme, motif, style, character or thing that permeates a particular type of literature. They are usually tied heavily to genre. For example, tropes in horror literature and film include the mad scientist or a dark and stormy night. Tropes can also be plots or events, such as the science fiction trope of an alien invasion that is deterred at the last minute. Many authors have twisted tropes into new forms to great success. Stephen King has been noteworthy for taking older horror tropes and reworking them into the modern world to great effect. Tropes may also serve as guides for writers trying to strengthen the overall effectiveness of their work (i.e., asking such questions as: what trope am I working with in this poem/story?).
A wiki collecting tropes used in television is available at TV Tropes Wiki.
[edit] Philosophy
[edit] In philosophy of history
The use of tropes has been extended from a linguistic usage to the field of philosophy of history by, among other theorists, Hayden White in his Metahistory (1973). Tropes are generally understood to be styles of discourse - rather than figures of style - underlying the historian's writing of history. They are historically determined in as much as the historiography of every period is defined by a specific type of trope.
For Hayden White, tropes historically unfolded in this sequence: metonymy, metaphor, synecdoche and, finally, irony.
[edit] Trope theory in metaphysics
- See also: Nominalism#Varieties_of_nominalism
Trope theory in metaphysics is a flavor of nominalism. Here, a trope is a particular instance of a property, like the specific redness of a rose. This use of the term goes back to D. C. Williams (1953).
Tropes have been presented as a possible solution to the problem of universals. Very, very briefly, one part of the problem of universals is determining what it is for two tokens to be of the same type. To give a concrete example, part of the problem would be determining what it is for six different green objects to all be the same in respect to their color. Two popular solutions to the problem of universals, as it relates to the possibility of entities existing in multiple locations at the same time, are as follows.
David Armstrong, a well known Australian philosopher, argues that there are instantiated universals. Briefly, an instantiated universal is a property (such as being green)that can exist in multiple locations at the same time. Going back to the problem of universals, for six different objects to all be green would be for each object to instantiate the universal green. The very same, identical universal green would be wholly located at each green object. To be even more specific, if a frog and a leaf are the same shade of green, the green of the frog and the green of the leaf are one and the same entity which happens to be multiply located.
Keith Campbell and Michael LaBossiere, among others, reject instantiated universals in favor of tropes. Briefly, a trope is a property (such as being green) that can only exist in one location at one time. Trope theorists explain what it is for two tokens to be of the same type in terms of resemblance. As an example, for six different objects to all be green would be for each object to have its own distinct green trope. Each green trope would be a different entity from the other green tropes, but they would resemble each other and would all be taken to be green because of their resemblance.
[edit] Music
Trope has three meanings in Cantillation, Medieval music, and 20th century music, see: Trope (music).
[edit] See also
eo:Tropo fr:Trope gl:Tropo io:Tropo it:Tropo no:Trope ru:Троп
