FIGURES OF SPEECH:
POSSIBLE NEURO-PHYSIOLOGICAL BASES?

Renato COCCHI MD, a neurologist and a medical psychologist

To prof. Faustino Savoldi
and prof. Francesco Zerbi, of Pavia
with my unchanged gratefulness

(Italian translation)

Summary

Figures of speech are the most used style's tools in speaking and in writing. Their use is common to peoples living in countries without any knowledge of our rhetoric.

Many figures of speech can act by adding a non-rational conscious force of persuading to the argumentation; nearly all stimulate the curiosity of the target; some modify prosody or rhythm of speaking.

A new type of analysis showed that 90 figures of speech spread into four mechanisms related to the neural network functioning of the brain. These mechanisms categorize perceptive stimuli according to identity by similarity, identity by space contiguity, post hoc ergo propter hoc (or cause and effect's relationship by temporal contiguity), and opposition.

The different levels (grammatical, syntactic, semantic, phonetic, rhythmic, attentional) where figures of speech apply themselves and the mechanism or mechanisms involved give peculiar features to each of them.

Figures of speech are not exclusive of verbal language, but they can be found in other perceptive fields too, as painting or advertising in the visual field,

Key words: Figures of speech; neural basis; perception; brain mechanisms similarity; space contiguity; time contiguity; opposition.

Figures of speech (FS) are the most used style's tools in speaking and in writing. When carefully observed, they show some features, not always in common. Many of them can act by adding a non-rational conscious force of persuading to the argumentation; nearly all stimulate the curiosity of the target; some modify the prosody or the rhythm.

The first feature gives help to form a judgement, to reach a decision, so making known itself as involved into cognitive mechanisms. The second and the third ones lead to keep up the attention of the listeners or the readers, and that represents the way to assure a better communication.

Many people using FS seem completely unaware of many problems these put

forward. One can sum these problems up as it follows:

- Do FS have any common grounds?

- How FS work?

- Why FS work?

- Why FS work even out of verbal language?

- Why FS work even out of verbal language?

- Are there any FS in languages other than Indo-Europeaî ones?

About 14 years ago, I published a paper on identity by similarity and identity by contiguity as perceptive mechanisms used for acquiring verbal language in infants (Cocchi, 1982). I wrote on their use to explain some figures of speech.

Following that, now I would try to give few answers to these questions, the first one looking at the possibility that FS have some common basic elements.

A proposed new classification of figures of speech

Attempts to classify FS have a long history, since Quintilian, but all these had their reference to language itself. From first aware users to the current debate, people agree that rhetoric is the refinement of a natural skill, but this skill seems mainly confined in verbal language. (Vickers, 1988).

I believe that only reaching a different founding basis we could explain the use of many FS in visual communication, mainly in advertising now. However nothing we can say on the power of persuading many FS possess. So, I think verbal language as the preferred field where FS bloomed, but we have to search somewhere else, in more primary mechanisms related to the neural network functioning.

Materials and method

According to that FS have feelings, as their target, the first question to answer was indeed if FS have some common features, so reducing their great variety.

The way I used for this goal was to check all FS by dividing them into four fields of belonging. They are similarity, space contiguity, post hoc, ergo propter hoc (ie. for that because after that) or temporal contiguity, opposition.To this I added specification by trying to identify the level or the levels (emotional, phonologic, semantic, grammatical, etc.) where that FS is applying. To the remaining questions, I shall answer by inference. I found the figures of speech I investigated in handbooks of rhetoric (Mar- chese, 1978; Vickers, 1988) which list them in alphabetical order.

Results

I could collect and analyse 90 FS. Table 1 shows the results I obtained from the analysis. In that table simil. means similarity, contig. stays for space contiguity, post hoc is a short for Post hoc, ergo propter hoc, alias time contiguity and eventially oppos. for opposition. Other keys: X = leading mechanism; x = secondary mechanism; (?) supposed mechanism; phon.= phonetic; syn= syntactic; gram.= gramatical; sem.= semantic, attn.= attentional; sens.= sensorial; emot.= emotional.

Table 1: Analysis of FS, in alphabetical order, and level or levels of working. (From Accumulation to Apostrophe).

Figure	similar	contig	post hoc	opposit	level1	level2
Accumulation	x	X	(?)	x	syn	sem/emot
Adnomination	X		x		gram.	sem.
Adynaton			x	X	sem.	emot.
Allegory	X				sem.
Alliteration	X				phon.	sem.
Allusion	x	X			sem.	attn.
Amplification	x	X			sem.	attn.
Anaclasis	X		x		sem.	phon.
Anadiplosis	X	x			phon.	attn.
Anaphore	X	x			phon.	attn.
Anastrophe		x		X	syn.	rhyth.
Anticlimax		x	X		sem.	rhyth.
Antimetabolis	x	x	x	X	syn./phon	sem.
Antimetathesis	x	x	x	X	syn./phon	sem.
Antiphrasis				X	sem.
Anthypophore		x	X	(?)	attn.	syn.
Antithesis		(?)	x	X	syn.	sem.
Antonomasis	X	x	(?)		Sem.
Apostrophe	X				emot./sem

Table 1: Analysis of FS, (Following: From Asyndeton to Metaphor ).

Figure	similar	contig	post hoc	opposit	level1.	level2.
Asyndeton		X	x		syn	sem
Assonance	X				phon.	sem.
Auxesis		X	X		gram./sem.	rhyth.
Brachilogy		X			gram/rhyth	attn.
Calembour	X	x			phon./sem.
Captatio benevol.	X		x		emot.
Catacresis	X				sem.
Cataphore			X		syn./sem.	attn.
Chiasm	x	X	x	x	syn.	sem.
Climax		(?)	X		sem./emot.
Comparison	X	x			sem.	syn.
Concatenatio	x	X	x		syn.	sem.
Concessio			x	X	emot.	sem.
Correctio	x	x	X		sem.	emot.
Deprecatio	X	x	x		emot.
Diaphore	X		x		phon./sem.
Dicolon	X	x			syn.	attn.
Dilemma		(?)	x	X	sem./emot.	syn.
Dubitatio	X			x	attn.	sem.
Ecphoresis	X	x	x		emot.	attn.
Ellipsis			x	X	syn.	attn.
Enallages			X	(?)	gram.	sem.
Emphasis	X	x	(?)		emot./sem.	syn.
Enumeration		X	x		syn.	sem.
Epanadiplosis	X		(?)		syn.	sem.
Epanalepsis	X	x	x		sem.	syn.
Epanortosis	X	x			sem./emot.	attn.
Epiphoneme	X	x	x		sem.	syn.
Epiphore	X		X		syn.	sem.
Epiphrasis			X		syn.	sem.
Epizeusis	X	X			syn.
Euphemism	X				emot.
Etimol. figure	X				sem.
Geminatio	X				sem./emot.	attn.
Homoteleute	X	x	x		gram./sem.	attn.
Hypallages		x	x	X	sem.	syn.
Hyperbatos		X		x	rhyth.	syn.
Hyperbole	X		x		emot.	sem.
Hysteron-proteron		X			attn.	syn.
Invective		X			emot.	syn.
Inversio				X	attn./sem.
Irony			x	X	sem.	emot.
Isocolon	x		X		syn.	sem.
Iunctura		X	x		sem.	syn.
Litotes				X	emot.	sem.
Meiosis	X		(?)		sem.
Metalepsis	X	x	x		sem.
Metaphor	X	x	x		sem.

Table 1: Analysis of FS, (Following: From Metonymy to Zeugma ).

Figure	similar	contig	post hoc	oppos	level1	level2
Metonimy		X			sem
Onomatopoeia	X				emot.	phon.
Oxymoron		x	(?)	X	attn.	sem.
Paradox				X	sem.	attn.
Paralipsis		(?)	x	X	attn.	sem.
Paronomasia	X	X			morph.	sem.
Percontatio		X	x		emot.
Personification	X	x			emot.
Polysyndeton		X	x		rhyth.	attn.
Preterition			X	x	emot.	sem.
Prolexis	X		x		emot.	syn.
Periphrasis	X	X			sem.
Pun	X	(?)	x		phon./sem
Regression	x		X		syn./attn.	sem.
Reticence		x	X		emot./attn
Sarcasm			x	X	emot.
Simile	X				sem.	syn.
Syllexis		x	X		syn.	sem.
Synecdoche	x	X			sem.
Synesthesy	X				sens.	sem.
Zeugma	x	x	X		gram.	sem.

As one can see in Table 1, every FS found its place into one of the four proposed categories, as for its first field of belonging. I did not always check over the second or the following fields of belonging with certainty. It is to note the complexity of this division, which parallels the different classification of the same FS linguistics did.

Table 2: Distribution of FS according to four brain mechanisms. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mechanism..................... simil............. contig. ......... post hoc ......... oppos.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Primary mechanisms	43	19	17	16
Secondary mechanis.	11	29	31	6
Supposed secondary	0	6	6	7

Table 2 shows similirity and space contiguity as first brain mechanisms involved.

Discussion

As for these categories (i.e. similarity, space contiguity, post hoc ergo propter hoc, and opposition), I will refer again what I wrote in previous papers (Cocchi, 1993; 1996) with some new details.

There is quite a long history about similarity and contiguity of perceptions as conditions the brain not only processes but has also some awareness of them. In other term the brain proves to be aware of how some neural effects of external or internal stimuli spread out through brain areas. Pribram 1976 stated as rules of reversible transformation:
"3. Nerve impulses arriving simultaneously at neighboring locations are spatially superposed, i.e., neighborhood interactions of an addictive (or subtractive) nature take place.

4. When two sources simultaneously evoke a state in the slow potential microstructure, correlation between them takes place and the correlations becomes decoded into nerve impulses."

These two rules give support the detection of similarity and spatial contiguity.

So, by pointing out ways of neural network functioning he gave a neural basis to what Jacobson and Halle 1956 and Jacobson 1963 have argued.

These last authors wrote about a mechanism's disruption of making similarities by partial identity (metaphors) or of that making similarities by spatial contiguity ( metonymies [perhaps also, or better, synecdoches]).

By myself, I referred to these two mechanisms to explain why English infants say "comed" instead of "came" when they are learning to talk. The same happens when the Italian infants learn speaking and say "aprito, coprito" instead of "aperto, coperto" (Cocchi, 1982).

Human brain works by making partial identities or identities by similarities (metaphors) and identities by space contiguity (Metonymies or synecdoches) out of the verbal language too.

Alcoholics did wrong answers by mostly using space contiguity, as it came about for demented (Pola, Zerbi & Cocchi, 1988), college students ( Cocchi, 1993). The same did alcoholics scoring less than 20, or scoring between 20 and 25 at RCM (Cocchi, 1993; 1996).

Similarity (or, better, identity by similarity) runs as quarter in a sample of alcoholics scoring 21-25 at RCM (Cocchi, 1996). This way of making mistakes was only as third in the previous sample of alcoholics (Cocchi, 1993).

In men low-spatial-frequency selective transient mechanisms dominated the perceptual process which underlie the similarity judgments (Petersik, 1978).

Newborn babies aged 7 hours to 11 days 15 hours can perceive a similarity between a stimulus when moving and when stationary. These findings suggest a degree of visual organization that is not usually attributed to the newborn (Slater et al., 1985).

Neurophysiological experiments using microelectrodes revealed that brain detection of similarity, on its lowest level, involves neuronal units which answer selectively only to an attribute of a stimulating event (Hebb, 1949; Pribram 1971; Olton and Samuelson, 1976). This means that, if a stimulus' feature modifies itself, at this low perceptive level the cell previously excited becomes silent, and the adjacent cell starts firing. The same have been verified in the temporal visual cortex of the monkey, where neurons responding to identity of faces are not the same which respond to face expressions (Husselmo, Rolls and Baylis, 1989).

From that, brain seems perceiving an elementary identity (identity of a distinctive feature) when the stimulus made by it excites always the same cell or group of cells (Cocchi, 1982).

It can happen so 1. When two external stimuli have a feature that induces firing of the same cells in the same time; 2. When an external stimulus owns the same feature seen in past in another stimulus now recalled (comparison between an external and an internal stimulus); 3. When the comparison of two recalled stimuli leads to the actual awareness that a common feature was exactly the same (Cocchi, 1982).

Experiments were made in an artificial neural network using adaptive algorithms derived from observations of cortical neurons during associative learning. This network acquired concurrently two distinct representations in response to presentation of stimuli. One resembled to associative conditioning, defined in terms of its sensitivity to forward pairing vs. simultaneous or backward pairing. The other reflected contiguous pairing of stimuli (Berner and Woody, 1991). However space contiguity need be carefully differentiated from temporal contiguity, and could have its base on the so-called ephaptic transmission of electric potentials between adjacent neurons.

The Post hoc, ergo propter hoc, besides leading to a fallacy in logic, offers the ground where classical conditioning stands. In the simplest cases also, it permits to learn a cause and effect relationship based on temporal contiguity and contingency. This fact has paramount importance in all animals because helps in the defence of themselves and of their own species. Choice of nutrients, identification of danger, choice of sexual partner and breeding of progeny need to make continuous cause and effect relationships.

The nervous systems of a broad variety of animals have evolved the ability to recognize predictive relationships between events if these occur repeatedly in a temporarily contiguous manner. Contiguity detection in Aplysia Californica owns these features. (Abrams and Kandel, 1988)

In Aplysia such an existing mechanism normally works and the dually regulated adenylate cyclase might underlie the temporal requirements for effective classical conditioning (Yovell, Kandel, Dudai and Abrams, 1987; Abrams, Karl and Kandel, 1991)

Temporal contiguity detection is surprisingly constrained across species and learning paradigms. This constraint suggests that the neuronal mechanisms for contiguity detection may have been conserved through phylogeny and may be limited in number (Ambrams and Kandel, 1988).

Finally opposition answers at RCM in alcoholics take the second place soon after space contiguity (Cocchi 1966). This fact parallels what I found both in college students and in the previous sample of alcoholics (Cocchi 1993; Cocchi 1993).

The way opposition presents itself can vary from true semantic to counterpart (or mirror), shape or colour opposition. Doing RCM the object can choose opposition wrong answers only by shape or colour opposition.

We discussed this brain mechanism when we presented the first case of "mirror speaking" after brain surgery (Cocchi et al., 1986). As we referred there after a literature survey, opposition can also arise in a state of brain toxicity and alcohol is a well-known poison for the brain. We can remember here what happens in some neuropathological conditions.

When subjects have suffered from a cerebral insult, often an ictus, but also as the result of an accidental trauma or neurosurgery, mirror actions can appear. We can see mirror writing and/or reading (Critchley 1928; Paradowski and Ginzberg, 1971; Streifler and Hofman, 1976, Fisher, Liberman and Shankweiler, 1978; Heilman, Howell, Valenstein and Rothi, 1980; Tankle and Heilman, 1982; Feinberg and Jones, 1985 ) or even mirror speaking ( Cocchi et al., 1986). Mirror behaviours are opposites, at least space opposites.

There is an explanation supported also through animal research (Orton, 1928; Noble, 1968; Bradshaw, Nettleton and Patterson, 1973). Perceptive stimuli, usually visual, produce both an engram and its opposite in the two half-brains in the same time. Normally the brain suppresses the opposite, which has its place in the non-dominant hemisphere. Under particular conditions this suppressing mechanism becomes inhibited, and so the opposite shows itself as a mirror image. Not only writing, reading and language can take on this mirror-like behaviour, but the handling of objects can become reversed too (Feinberg & Jones, 1985).

These last researchers suggest that lift-right orientation be not a unitary characteristic. They maintain it can have a link to differential activation of the cerebral hemispheres, when carrying out motor or other types of tasks.

It could be curious that 3-4 months' infants could discriminate differences in orientation (even among obliques). But they tended to view mirror images, especially lateral mirror image, as equivalent stimuli (Bernstein, Gross and Wolf, 1978). Is the suppression mechanism of the opposite engram not yet working at that age?

On the other hand, the mastering of the co-presence of opposites was judged a feature of higher intellectual level (Rothenberg 1973; 1982).

The presence of mirror writing or mirror speaking witnesses double engrams also for internal stimuli. Opposition seems involved in temporary, stable or stabilized prevalence of non dominant half-brain in dextrals, a condition perhaps more frequent than what one can imagine (Cocchi, 1994). I reported the first case where opposition concerns emotional thinking in a "schizo-affective" woman (Cocchi, 1996). Often in a day, emotional thoughts of that woman were the full opposites of what she felt. She appeared unable to control these intrusive and emotionally negative thoughts. The explanation suggested refers to disruption of the suppressing mechanism of the opposite engram, and to stabilized opposite half-brain dominance for emotional thinking, dealing with the compulsory emerging of bad oughts.

Conclusion

Now I think I can answer to the questions I forwarded at the beginning of this paper.

1. Figures of speech have a common ground to be identified in mechanisms of neural network functioning. They allow to perceive identities by similarity and by space contiguity, cause and effect's relationships by temporal contiguity, and opposition by the opposite engram.

2. Figures of speech work by giving to the verbal language the opportunity of exploiting these four mechanisms at various levels where language can apply itself.

3. Figures of speech work because they are a key for a waiting lock (simile). They help to persuade by making identities (also emotional identities) or cause and effect's relationships, and attract attention by pointing up oppositions.

4. There are many examples of what we know as figures of speech, in different field. As for the visual field, allegory in painting has a long history (eg. Tiepolo for Venice, Appiani for Napoleon). Recently I have seen a pure visual oxymoron (The country into the town) in an advertising campaign made by a leading Italian pasta producer. Being these four mechanisms not solely related to verbal language, but common to all brain structures, other perceptive fields can use them.

5. I owe Wickers the notice that peoples living in countries without any knowledge of our rhetoric used figures of speech. Among them we can count China, India, Persia, Arabia, Maori, Tikopia, Bali, and Africa (see Wichers, 1988, for references). Although FS seem the fruit of the so-called Western Countries, they bloom anywhere because they not depend on a specific verbal language, but only on common CNS mechanisms.

Eventually I believe that these links between rhetoric and CNS will open many research opportunities, from graphic art to the language of mentally retarded.

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Printed on It. J. Intellect. Impair. 1997, 10: 35-42.

Author's address: dr Renato COCCHI, via Rabbino 3

42199 Reggio Emilia (Italy)

renatococchi@libero.it

(Italian translatin)

Theoretical bases

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