Semiotics and Figures of Rhetoric

Abstract

This paper does not focus on tropes, which are generally considered worthier of analysis, but on non-tropic figures. For the study of such figures, we must take the tensive dimensions into account: intensity and extension. Figures are enunciative operations to intensify and, consequently, also attenuate meanings. In an attempt to highlight (or weaken) meanings, the enunciator produces, within the extension axis, four possible operations, that have already been analyzed by previous rhetoricians: adjunction or repetition (with the consequent expansion of what is enunciated); suppression (with the consequent reduction of what is enunciated); the transposition of elements, that is, the exchange of their place in what is enunciated and the change or substitution of elements. This paper shows that such figures are not “discourse luxury”, since they always have an argumentative function.