Metallage

Metallage (me-tal’-la-gee): When a word or phrase is treated as an object within another expression.

“This is not that,” In the foggy ambiguity of a pronounal haze we struggle as “that” does not specify, and neither does “this” specify, their antecedents. One may be left wondering what the hell they are they talking about, when in fact “this” and “that” are simply examples, not actual subjects of an unquoted discourse—we may see them in their own right as bland substitutes for “what is.“

Why then do we tolerate them (whoops). Why are they (whoops) used at all? I don’t know. Maybe to fight the boredom of repitition—that makes them strategic, not simple substitutes, they may seek a “perking up” of a given discourse—freshening it with a new note that gives variation to the semantic drone of the same. So, pronouncing an effect rhetorically, they help to induce cooperation. But, if they (whoops) be used too distant from their antecedents they lose their punch. They become the forgotten representatives of their distant constituents. They need to reintroduce their antecedents from time to time so they will not by swallowed by them and transformed into sites of thin or absent imagery, the death knell of effective word choice. They must be resurrected or remain in the shadow of dimmed significance, rehotorically short-circuited—vividness darkened by disuse.

All this hearkens back to “enough is enough” and the rhetorical prospect of timing. We must know when to draw the line as well as where to draw it, not to mention not. How many pronouns should a rhetor chuck or chuck at all? Time and circumstance tell all. Sometime abundant repetition can be your keynote as in the accusation of conspirators, while pointing around the room you say, “He, and he, and he, and he, all of them, served Jeffery.” Or you list them by name if they have the gravitas you’re looking for. There are more contingencies for word choice, but suffice it to say you have a choice and should weigh it on scales of rhetorical effectiveness.

There’s more to the story than meets the ear. Take heed and know your options in every particular case. “What you say and how you say it” makes what you think in your head effective or not..