tropes and schemes
In this lesson, you’ll learn the difference between a trope—a rhetorical tactic that changes (or turns) the meaning of words—and a scheme—a rhetorical tactic that plays with the way words, phrases, and clauses appear in patterns in your writing. Tropes mess with the way you think about a word. Take sledgehammer. When musician Peter Gabriel sings, “I wanna be your sledgehammer,” he’s playing around with the way we understand the word sledgehammer. It’s an odd, and interesting, trope he’s using. Schemes
Here’s a video explaining the difference more thoroughly for you.
Embedded Exercises (download and print out this handout to accompany the exercises on the video)