Juxtaposition!

[Alex Bragi]

Do you have a favourite juxtaposition?

Again, for those as ignorant as me, juxtapositions (thanks, Curtis) are opposite phrases place side by side to give impact. All Americans would be familiar with this one – “ Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”

Sorry, I can't think of any Australian ones.

[red~vixen]

She felt pleasantly angry.

or

Painful ecstacy.

or

Sweet and Sour.

Do these count. I can't really think of a whole sentence right off hand.

[Alex Bragi]

Hi red vixen,

Do these count. I can't really think of a whole sentence right off hand."

I don't realy know, I'll have to ask my grammar god, Curtis.

'good and interesting, what ever they are though.

[Jones, Nikka]

Conversation between a Canadian from Toronto, Ontario and a Canadian from Montreal, Quebec:

"Working Hard?"

"Hardly Working."

I have never seen it, but apparently Toronto is the only city in the world where bartenders say things like: "1am! Last call, job's a-waiting!"

[Aurelius]

Do you mean quotes like...

Never let a fool kiss you, or a kiss fool you.

(This thread is worth visiting for the Avatars alone)

[Aurelius]

Or the famous one by Mae West

It's not the men in my life, it's the life in my men.

[boccaccio2000g]

Originally posted by Alex Bragi
Do you have a favourite juxtaposition?

Again, for those as ignorant as me, juxtapositions (thanks, Curtis) are opposite phrases place side by side to give impact. All Americans would be familiar with this one – “ Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”

Sorry, I can't think of any Australian ones.

Actually, I believe that this ancient rhetorical device is technically called 'parallelism' not 'juxtaposition", although the latter word describes the concept nicely enough.

Theodore Sorensen, JFK's speechwriter, used this device frequently:

"Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate."

and

"Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind."

are just two of the more memorable Sorensen/Kennedy parallelisms.



Steven Stills gave us a more hedonistic example

"If you can't be with the one you love, love the one with you're
with."



And here's one that occurred to me while I was writing this --


"'Tis better to love a loser, than to lose a lover."

(some of you may want to turn that one around! :-) )

Boccaccio

[Aurelius]

Actually, Bocci, I thought this type of phrase was called a Chiasmus, though parallelism is certainly appropriate too.

Kennedy followed in Churchill's literary tradition, where Churchill's chiasmi helped inspire a nation throughout WWII. His quotes are available everywhere so there's no point reciting them here.

Time for an on-topic chiasmus,

It's bound to be fun, and it's fun to be bound!

and something from one of my heroes, Kermit the Frog.

Time's fun when you're having flies!

[Curtis]

A reversable quotation, like the two Sorensen quotes provided by boccaccio and the first three by Aurelius are chiasmi (or whatever the plural for chiasmus might be). The originating quotation for this thread may well also qualify as a chiasmus, but it seems to me not to be a particularly good example.

A parallelism (according to Webster's New Universal) draws a parallel between one thing or idea and another. Just how that would differ from a simile or a metaphor eludes me. (And that's brings up a point that's bugged for for quite a long time: Just what IS a meta for?)

I wouldn't have the least idea how to categorize Aurelius's Kermit quotation, but it seems to be a close relative of the non sequitur, which I was just discussing with Alex last night and hoping she wouldn't introduce as a topic.

Grammatical taxonomy is NOT my forte, contrary to what Alex would have you believe -- trivia is. Keeping this essential fact firmly in mind, I would call all of red-vixen's examples 'contradictory adjectival descriptions', strictly for obfuscatory reasons, you understand.

Nikka's example seems to me to be a legitimate juxtaposition, for which definition I refer to Alex's original criterion (or whatever the singular of criteria may be), "opposite phrases placed side-by-side to give impact".

I like boccaccio's Steven Stills quotation and the one with which he closed his thread, both of which seem to have some elements of the chiasus and some of the juxtaposition.

Here are a few others: "I am the tallest short guy I know."(Mel Brooks) -- some juxtapositioning going on here, but I would classify it as more irony than anything else.
"We had to destroy the village in order to save it." -- more irony, unintentional this time.
"Man, when I tell you she was cool, she was red hot; I mean she was steaming."(Thin Lizzie - 'The Boys Are Back In Town') -- I'd call that a juxtaposition.
"She blows hot and cold" -- that's an advertisement.

If we refer back to Webster's, "a placing, or the situation of being, close together or side by side", I think we'll find that the ultimate juxtaposition would be of a boy and girl. (Which brings up the question, "Just which position IS the juxtaposition and what does it look like when it's at home?" -- non sequitur.)

[Curtis]

A few examples of what I call juxtapostions:

"The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat"

"The long and the short of it" (or "We're the tall and the short of it.")

from American folk music, "Rained all day/ The night I left/ The weather it was dry/ The sun so hot/ I froze myself"

and, the granddaddy of them all (and possibly the granddaddy of all run-on sentences), courtesy of Charles Dickens: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way -- ..."

This leaves me with just one question: Is it better to be a grammar god, or a coffee god? You can live without coffee, but everyone needs a Gramma(r).

[boccaccio2000g]

Originally posted by Aurelius
Actually, Bocci, I thought this type of phrase was called a Chiasmus, though parallelism is certainly appropriate too.

Kennedy followed in Churchill's literary tradition, where Churchill's chiasmi helped inspire a nation throughout WWII. His quotes are available everywhere so there's no point reciting them here.

Time's fun when you're having flies!

Et tu, Aurelius?

Boy, just a few days ago I nominated him for Nikka's hedonistic Hall of Fame and now he shows me up! ;-)

Aurelius is quite right about 'chiasmus', which is THE technical term for this sort of contrasting expression, but one which I thought would be utterly unfamiliar to everyone but him.

I was indeed remiss in not giving Churchill credit for inspiring both Kennedy and Sorenson. Who can forget his comment, after Monty's victory at El Alamein: "This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is perhaps the end of the beginning."

And that is only the best known of many.

But to get back to our usual topic:

"When in doubt, it's better to cop a feel, than to feel a cop."

Boccaccio

[Curtis]

Okay, I think your Churchill quote is a juxtaposition and your second one is another non sequitur. Am I missing something?

[Alex Bragi]

How about - " A man's hard when he's soft, and soft when he's hard"?

[Jones, Nikka]

I believe it goes like this:
It is hard to find a good man but good to find a hard man

[Alex Bragi]

Jones, Nikka,

That's a good one!

No, that's how it was meant to go. Yes, they do sound similar, but they are not the same in meaning, although they're both true aren't they? *gg*

Alex

[Jones, Nikka]

Originally posted by Alex Bragi
No, that's how it was meant to go. Yes, they do sound similar, but they are not the same in meaning, although they're both true aren't they? *gg*

Sorry Alex, I did not mean to sound like I was correcting your post. Silly me, I accidentally deleted part of my post which was meant to read like this:
I do not know which diva of the silver screen said this one (West, Monroe or even Gabor) but I believe it goes like this: It is hard to find a good man but good to find a hard man.
And yes, you are right about both being true.

[cariad]

When I found this post I was surprised to see that no-one had posted the one I had drummed into me all the way through university.

Fail to prepare, prepare to fail.

cariad