A is for Antimetabole
Good morning everyone, and welcome to a little project I've started. Let's call it "26 Days of Figures." It'll be an "Alphabet of Figures" in a way, by no means exhaustive, giving me a chance to share and riff on a few of my favourite rhetorical figures. This project is primarily generative for me, getting me thinking and writing about some central figures directly or indirectly connected to my doctoral work. So let's begin.
A is for antimetabole. Read it slowly: an ti me TA bo le.
In Greek it literally means "turning about," which is apt, because it's a figure in which the order of words is quite literally turned about in successive clauses. Some examples will help more than clumsy definition.
Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! —Isaiah 5:20
Isaiah's is a beautifully constructed passage that uses three different antimetaboles - evil:good/good:evil, darkness:light/light:darkness, and bitter:sweet/sweet:bitter.
We often symbolize the figure ABBA, where A is an instance of a word, "evil" for example, and B is an instance of another word, such as "good." If we were to use these symbols in the passage from Isaiah, the string would be ABBA CDDC EFFE.
Perhaps a more familiar antimetabole is J.F.K's imperative "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."
It probably wouldn't take long for you to find many, many examples out in the wild. It sneaks into proverbial sayings and platitudes like "when the going gets tough, the tough get going" or "it's not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog." One of the reasons it's so common is because its formal design is so pleasing, so conclusive and resolved, the propositions are more digestible. Neither of the above statements about dogs or toughs is necessarily true, but we're all quite likely to nod our heads in agreement and provide a nice little anecdote supporting the proverb.
This last point leads the discussion from form to function. We know the figure has the form ABBA, but what does it do? (Besides help us swallow undigestible platitudes.) At it's most basic level, the figure makes an argument from inversion, which is to say it inverts the order of key terms to suggest some truth about identity or causality. For example, in his quotation above, J.F.K. is essentially arguing for a cultural inversion, an "about face" for a social attitude that has been self-serving to become one that is other-serving. This turning about is summed up nicely in his country:you/you:country figuration, suggesting the inversion of the attitude will cause the inversion of the country's direction. (He doesn't say so explicitly, of course, but it's implied. Sneakily.)
The passage from Isaiah uses the figure to amplify the cause/effect ("Woe unto them") of those who would take what's bad and make it good, and what's good and make it bad. The 3 antimetaboles in the passage make subtle identity claims, all while supporting the causal argument that those who engage in such inversions will in the end, find their own ends inverted.
Ok. This is enough for one day, especially day one. I'll leave with a warning and a question.
The warning, from Henry Peachum in the 16th century: "In using this forme of speech, it is requisite and behoveful that the sentence inversed be not false, or that it be not perversely put contrary to the truth & meaning of the speaker through the fault of memorie." It's a warning to us as readers; be careful this slippery little figure doesn't hide a falsehood.
The question: what are your favourite instances of antimetabole?
