Catachresis

 

Catachresis

This photo of Adrian Peterson with football textured skin could be read as an example of catachresis depending on your reading of the visual metaphor, and the metaphor set forth in Nike's combat ad campaign.

The concept of catachresis has to do with inexact usage of words, and more specifically a combination of words that describes something in a way that slippage occurs if the statement is scrutinized. The word is derived from the Greek word for abuse or misuse, abusio. In Rhetorica Ad Herennium the process is described as, "the inexact use of a like and kindred word in place of the precise and proper one, as follow: 'The power of the man is short..."[1] The misusage is not always inappropriate, especially in the realm of visaul description when we describes things like "the face of the mountain" or the legs of the table." So, in a sense catachresis can be conceptualized in terms of a metaphor. However, the metaphor is a "highly unusual or outlandish comparison between things. This figure moves beyond a metaphor by degrees -- the language used for comparative purposes is strikingly at odds with conventional usage."[2] In Poetria Nova, Geoffrey of Vinsauf characterizes it as, "polite abusio, when neither the proper nor the conventional word is chosen, but rather one that is a neighbor to the proper one."[3]  The consequences of this rhetorical device deal largely with the exchange value of words and phrases in terms of characterizing events or places. Catachresis is a process in which the exchange is not equal, or something is exchanged for nothing.  For example, Marx's dancing table in Capital take catachresis to another level allowing the table to dance about as if its "legs" were animated or anthropomorphized into actual legs.  Catachresis can be read in different ways, whether as an abuse of language or a simple evolution of a phrase or word into a new or alternate usage. One way to look at catachresis positively is that all meanings shift over time as language and usage evolve, and that catachresis is one step in the mutation or evolution of meaning.[4] Negative readings of the process, of course, focus on a supposed bastardization of or mischaracterization of a word or phrase's meaning, and the resulting incommensurability of the symbolic exchange value of the new application with the old one.  Some distinctions as to the significance of these exchanges have been thought about  in the terms of what catachresis is used to name, since the primary function of catachresis has traditionally been to affix a name or an image to something previously unnamed.[5] Samuel Levin makes distinctions as to the nature of catachresis in so far as it names something metaphysical or material, a "pedestrian affair" to his mind, versus naming something that has just come into our consciousness. Levin asserts that language is unequipped to do this in some cases, and that is why catachresis is employed.[6]

SOUND BARRIERS

This picture when paired with its title engages in catachresis.