Enthymeme (en’-thy-meem): 1. The informal method [or figure] of reasoning typical of rhetorical discourse. The enthymeme is sometimes defined as a “truncated syllogism” since either the major or minor premise found in that more formal method of reasoning is left implied. The enthymeme typically occurs as a conclusion coupled with a reason. When several enthymemes are linked together, this becomes sorites. 2. A figure of speech which bases a conclusion on the truth of its contrary. [Depending on its grammatical structure and specific word choice, it may be chiasmus].
“Make sure to lock the door.” She looked at me with a puzzled expression on her face.
I thought it was amazing that we found our way to her mud and bark champole—the dome-seeped structure where her people lived. There were no roads, just dirt paths crisscrossing everywhere. Svelto said, “We have no locks here.” Then I remembered: Svelto’s culture is lockless. Burglary is not a crime—it is an art form. This is inevitable in a lockless culture. When I told Svelto to lock her door, I was reminding her of something that’s “normal” in my culture, failing to realize that the norm was not operative in Elvizonia.
There were so many things I had to unlearn to live comfortably there. We had met in a cocktail lounge in New York, and married when we got tired of dating, and then, moved to Elvizonia. She had done an amazing job of assimilating to the dominant US cultural norms—it was like she was from New Jersey or Ohio.
When we got to Elvizonia, she expected me to assimilate. I complied. I had to get a tattoo of her face just below my belly button. The tattoo artist used a sharpened stick dipped in ink made from some kind of blackberries and hot sauce. It made me cry and Svelto was expected slap my face every couple of minutes during the tattooing. The tattoo was terrible. It looked like an ink blot with a nose and scraggly hair. But, in the aesthetics of Elvizonia it was considered a “superb” work of art.
The food was great. I developed a love of potatoes and mutant rabbits—the rabbits had very long ears and only one hind leg. Of course, the lack of one leg made it easy to collect them for dinner (or lunch for that matter). They would claw at the ground and spin around. You just picked them up and put them in a sack. The extra long ears were like carrying handles! Pick ‘em up, bag ‘em, and carry ‘em home.
For me, one of the strangest things of all was the Zeckszoot (Sexsuit). It was a fleece onesie —green for males and red for females—it was mandatory to wear during sex. Failure to wear a Zeckszoot could result in a fine, or even imprisonment. There were peepholes in every champole, and local officials had to be informed of your intention to have sex so they could observe through your peephole, making sure regulations were being followed.
As you can imagine, Elvizonian culture was too much of a stretch for me. My ethnocentricity was disabling. I lost the love of my life. I look at my tattoo of her face and feel the painful burden of my failure at cultural sensitivity. But then! There was Svelto!
She was working in the cocktail lounge where we met. She saw me and came over to my table. She said “Follow me.” We went back into the storeroom. She sad “Wait my little rabbit” and stepped behind a tall stack of boxes. In about a minute, she stepped out from behind the boxes. She was wearing an Elvizonian sex suit. She held up a green sex suit, wriggled it around and threw it at me. I recognized the “sex suit throwing ritual” as an Elvizonian hookup gesture—a one-off—a “just for fun.” I put on my suit and put my hands under my armpits—making wings of my arms. I flapped toward Svelto. We circled behind the boxes. Nobody was watching.
Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu)
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