Performing Prose: The Study and Practice of Style in Composition

7. Schemes

106 7 Schemes Like the tropes, the schemes are moves within a writer’s repertoire of performance. They are units of verbal behavior that we can point to, analyze, evaluate, and (ultimately) incorporate into our own writing. However , unlike the tropes, which involve “turning” a word from its conventional meaning to an unusual one, the schemes name various patterns of words—that is, how words are arranged within a sentence or across several sentences. Borrowing a common distinction from linguistics, we can say that tropes correspond to semantics (word meaning), while schemes correspond to syntax (word order) (Fahnestock 11). To use another analogy, the schemes are like the plaster molds that a special effects artist might use to fashion a mask or figurine: they are the shapes that writers often use to cast their sentences. But the analogy is not perfect. The schemes are not empty vessels devoid of meaning and function. While giving language a discernible shape, the schemes also shape the realities to which language refers, organizing it and structuring it in particular ways over others. Consider these stylistic variants and imagine they are alternatives for describing the same incident: • The whispers grew to shouts, and the shouts became hurled stones. (Teague 54) • They whispered. They shouted. They hurled stones. +ROFRPE.LOO&KLQGG $0 Schemes / 107 Both variants use schemes (we’ll learn their names below), but each depicts a slightly different reality. The first, with its repetition of “shouts,” suggests a tightly linked sequence of events with each action building progressively into the next (the verbs “grew” and “became” further this suggestion). The second variant merely lists these actions without providing any explicit temporal or causal connections between them (although the fact that they are ordered in the way they are suggests a chronology). Its strict parallelism emphasizes equivalency among the actions over sequence; as a result, it opens up the possibility that these actions were happening simultaneously. In addition to structuring reality, the schemes help writers organize and orchestrate their relationships with readers. As vehicles for social interaction, they can • Signal the level of formality (high, middle, low) as well local shifts across these levels; • Control the emotional intensity of prose—cranking it up here, ratcheting it down there; • Showcase the writer’s wit and command over his or her medium; • Enlist readers into collaborative relationships, inviting them to desire the completion of a pattern once they get its gist. (Burke, Rhetoric of Motives 58–59) Rhetoricians from antiquity and the Renaissance catalogued dozens upon dozens of schemes. Their goal was to be exhaustive, to classify every conceivable pattern into which language could fall. In this chapter, we focus on several representative schemes from four major groups: schemes of balance, schemes of omission, schemes of unusual word order, and schemes of repetition. This categorization (which borrows from Corbett and Hickey) offers a convenient way to organize these devices, although we’ll see that some schemes could fit comfortably into more than one group. Our goal is not simply to name, define, and illustrate each of these schemes, which would be to stop at the level of mere stylistic description . The real payoff of learning the schemes comes with pushing further and asking, “What can these verbal devices do? How do they structure the realities or experiences they are used to express? How do they affect interactions between writer and reader?” Answers to these questions will ultimately depend on the immediate context, but for each scheme, there are usually general or conventional functions that it might serve. We identify and discuss these functions so that both writers and analysts can apply this +ROFRPE.LOO&KLQGG $0 108 / Schemes knowledge when writing original compositions or interpreting stylistic choices in the works of others. Schemes of Balance Schemes of balance create relationships between words and ideas through structural similarity. In some cases, similarity in structure reinforces or echoes similarities in meaning. In other cases, structural similarity serves as a foil to throw opposite or antithetical ideas into sharper relief. Perhaps the most common scheme of balance is parallelism, or placing grammatically equivalent items in coordinated pairs or coordinated series of words, phrases, or clauses: • All it takes is a dollar and a dream. (Florida Lotto slogan) • We are more often arrested, convicted, and mobbed. (Du Bois 18) • You make faces associated with pain, with tears, with orgasm, with the sort of exertion that would call others to...