Analyzing and Interpreting Literature / Unit 5 AIL 0415 short lesson, about 20 seconds
Why That Understatement Works
Captions available
The idea
All smiles stopped together is litotes, the deliberate understatement defined in the last unit. Saying less than the occasion demands makes the speaker seem unmoved, and the reader supplies the killing the words decline to name. The technique is the characterisation.
In practice
Litotes, doing the characterising.
Where people slip
The reader supplies what he omits.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
Builds on
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