Litotes: the most common rhetorical device you've never heard of
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Version 0 of 1. Sometimes an unfamiliar ancient Greek word can mask a rhetorical device that’s as commonplace as salt. One such device goes by the name of litotes – and you’ve been using it all your life, probably without even knowing it. If you’ve ever been asked if you like something and replied “it’s not bad”, you were using litotes. If you’ve ever found yourself encouraging someone to do something by telling them “it’s not hard”, you were using litotes. And if you’ve ever questioned someone’s intelligence by describing them as being “not the sharpest tool in the box”, you were using litotes then, too. When I first came across definitions of litotes, they made my head spin. For instance, the Oxford English Dictionary defines it as “an ironical understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by the negative of its contrary”. As you might have already gathered, litotes takes the form of a double negative. A positive statement like “it’s good” is transformed into its opposite, “it’s bad”, and then negated. So we end up with the litotes, “it’s not bad”. But what’s the difference between something that’s good and something that’s not bad? Well, the first obvious difference is that litotes is a form of understatement. The speaker is implying that the thing is less than good; not quite up to the mark, in fact. So, “not bad” can be a euphemistic alternative to describing something more bluntly as “awful” or “rubbish”. We often use litotes as a way to express criticism while, at the same time, trying to avoid hurting someone else’s feelings. Litotes, though, is not always as innocent as it looks; it can have a sting in its tail. At the beginning of this general election year, in a speech to the Fabian Society conference, Ed Miliband deployed the following litotes: “The problem is that under David Cameron we have a government who, far from turning things round, is making things far worse. Not by accident. But because they are guided by totally the wrong beliefs about how a country succeeds in the 21st century.” By substituting the antonymous phrase “on purpose” for the word “accident”, and turning the negative statement – “not on purpose” – into a positive one, we’re left with the phrase “on purpose”. Reverse-engineering the Labour leader’s litotes in this way reveals that he’s saying something altogether more polemical. Imagine the hullabaloo his speech would have caused if he’d accused Cameron’s government of make things worse for people “on purpose”. In this, instance, far from being an understatement, Miliband’s provocative criticism hides itself in plain sight, behind a cloak of irony. In November 2014, David Cameron made a speech on the potentially incendiary topic of immigration. And, like a man skating on a frozen pond on a sunny day, he proceeded with great caution: “We should be clear. It is not wrong to express concern about the scale of people coming into the country.” He could have been more forthright and simply said: “It is right to express concern about the scale of people coming into the country.” But he went for the more understated, euphemistic “it is not wrong”. He used litotes to take the sting out of a highly divisive issue for both his party and the country. Litotes made a political hot potato just that bit cooler. And those on both sides of the immigration debate were able to find a crumb of comfort in what he said. Litotes is best appreciated as a kind of rhetorical magician or illusionist. It can draw our attention to something – its badness, its difficulty, etc – while, simultaneously, emphasising its opposite. The quickness of the rhetorical hand deceives the mind’s eye – now you see what’s being meant, now you don’t. Litotes enabled Ed Miliband to go on the offensive while keeping his powder dry; and it allowed David Cameron to disarm his opponents as he continued to set up camp in the no-man’s-land that divides them. Litotes’ ability to draw attention to something by appearing to ignore or diminish it is attractive to politicians because it’s the rhetorical equivalent of having your cake and eating it. Like its cousin apophasis, litotes is one of the stealth bombers of the rhetorical world – its anonymous ubiquity defies reason and gives it the power to strike at any time, without warning. @MartinShovel http://www.creativityworks.net/ Mind your language invites readers to submit outstanding examples of electionspeak between now and 7 May. Add your favourite below, or tweet with the hashtag #electionspeak. There are prizes for the winning politician and whoever nominates them. |