Trope Card Series
Assignment: over the course of the semester, you will write a series of twenty-four “Master Trope Analysis Cards.” The goal of this assignment is to become a great interpreter of figurative language. Think of it as developing your ear and eye to recognize and understand the power of figurative language to construct our shared worlds of meaning.
Every four card set must include all four tropes: metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony.
The first rule of this assignment: you must find the tropes you will analyze outside of our course readings and discussion. As long as they are not from our class, they can come from any published source, and, as you practice, you will see and hear the master tropes everywhere: in pop songs, in movie dialogue, in texts you are reading for other classes, on the news, on Facebook, on Twitter, and in advertisements, etc.
Create each of your cards as follows:
Quote exactly from the text where you find the trope you will analyze.
Name the trope (metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, or irony). Explain the trope in the quotation. For instance, if the trope is metaphor, say precisely and exactly what is being compared to what in the quotation. If the trope is synecdoche, explain which words in the quotation name a part that stands for a larger whole, etc.
Offer a very brief analysis of the following dimensions of meaning:
What does the trope highlight? That is, what does it seem like it is trying to get you to see or understand?
What does the trope empower and disempower?
What does the trope hide? That is, how does the trope get something about its subject wrong?
For irony only: how does the contradiction produce the dialectical identity of each element?
4. On the reverse side of the card, offer a complete and properly formatted MLA citation.
Format: Each analysis must be on a 3x5 inch index card. The top of the card must contain your name, See example cards for complete formatting details. On the back of each card, you must provide a complete MLA bibliographic citation for the source of the quotation you analyze. Your citation should rigorously follow all MLA style guidelines.
Due Dates: See the course calendar on the website.