Chris Lydgate has a piece in the Opinion Journal about the sad state of prison affairs near Portland, Oregon. Though the subjet matter of the piece is quite interesting, what caught my eye was Lydgate's cheeky use of chiasmus, a rhetorical literary devise whereby a parallel structure is reversed for poetic effect.
Like this: "While scofflaws scoff and perps perpetrate, the Board of Commissioners is deadlocked over the sheriff's budget."
It isn't an exact chiasmus as I learned it, as the subject and verb of each phrase are in the same position. However, the spirit is there as the one syllable word that echoes its polysyllabic partner switches places in the second phrase.
I know I'm a language geek, but something like this impresses me more than whether or not Oregonians can figure out how to fill a jail with criminals.
1 comment:
It is not a chiasmus at all . Is it because you want us to be too smart to go and to stop too stupid?
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