Rhetorical tropes in Croatian daily newspapers

Journal of Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Split, No. 5, 2012

Original scientific paper

Anita Runjić-Stoilova   ORCID icon orcid.org/0000-0001-5060-2083 ; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Split, Split, Croatia 

pages 115-128

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05_06_Runjic_Stoilova PDF

Abstracts:

In this paper figurativeness in Croatian daily newspapers has been analyzed. The goal was to establish the most represented tropes in the journalistic discourse and also to explore which newspaper is the most figurative. Rhetorical tropes are figurative nonliteral expressions that involve a turn of meaning. They can be translated into another term, which, from the logical perspective, has correct or
proper meaning. Usage of tropes is internally motivated by the need for word formation, poetics and term adequacy (Škarić, 2000:119). However, tropes are very common in everyday language. In contrast to other figures of speech (e.g., figures of repetition like anaphora, epiphera, alliteration etc.), tropes are said to be more closely related to content than to form or structure. Rhetorical tropes in this paper
are divided according to the traditional but simplified Quintilian’s classification (Quintilian, 1985): metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, antonomasia, periphrasis and other which includes hyperbole, allegory, personification, irony, litotes and emphasis. The analyses include four daily newspapers: Večernji list, Jutarnji list, Slobodna
Dalmacija and 24 sata. 964 tropes are singled out and the results show that tropes most often appeared in Slobodna Dalmacija. Furthermore, metaphor is analyzed and outlined in the journalistic discourse as one of the master tropes.

Keywords:

antonomasia; daily newspaper; figures (schemes); metaphor; metonymy; periphrasis; synecdoche; tropes

URI:

https://zbornik.ffst.unist.hr/?p=1256&lang=en