Read At Your Own Risk -- Caution, Brain May Explode --

[dorkierthanthou]

Here is an e-mail for a lecture being given by the "Rhetoric" department at Cal. I had to post it for everyone's enjoyment

Comments

[la_tempete]

score one for scholastic snobbery and exclusionism, score zero for people who like to understand things, especially themselves when they speak.

P.S. I don't think that either metalepsis or positing are really words, and if they are then Mr. Webster should be shot for allowing such things into our language.

[whinknee]

This person really likes to hear themselves say big words, like Ren from Ren and Stimpy.

hahahahaahh...ohh...

[baciodelrospo]

I'm a little embarrassed to say that this e-mail could have come from a few of the departments at Reed. Particularly the Phil department. Luckily, not mine.

Positing is, unfortunately, a real word. Metalepsis, on the other hand....

...Okay, so I'm a dork. Is it comforting to know that metalepsis is, in the OED, listed with "Rhetoric" directly next to it, indicating that only rhetoricians use this word? It comforted me, anyway. Here's what Oxford has to say: "The rhetorical figure consisting in the metonymical substitution of one word for another which is itself a metonym; (more generally) any metaphorical usage resulting from a series or succession of figurative substitutions."

I think this lecture sounds like it would be interesting...if it weren't about rhetoric. Y'know, like, if it were about anything that actually matters. Oh well. What are you doing reading emails from the rhetoric department, anyway? Don't you have reading to do, mister?

Re: hahahahaahh...ohh...

[dorkierthanthou]

I get about a billion and a half e-mails per day from the graduate secretary of the history department about many many things I do not care about, this is one such example heh