Paradox
This article is part of the Figures of Speech course. You may choose to follow it in a structured way, or read each item separately.
- Figures of comparison
- Figures of meaning
- bathos or anticlimax
- a descent, either disappointing or ludicrous
- circumlocution
- talking around the subject
- climax
- propositions or ideas rising in force
- hyperbole
- exaggeration
- irony
- words with a hidden meaning
- litotes
- using double negatives to make an understatement
- meiosis
- making an understatement
- oxymoron and paradox
- words that contradict each other
- pun
- a play upon words
- satire
- social or political comment through mockery or scorn
- sarcasm
- a bitter gibe or taunt
- Figures of construction
- Figures of sound patterning
- Miscellaneous Figures
Paradox is the linking of two apparently contradictory ideas. (If we are more concerned with the words than the ideas which they express, we call it oxymoron.) Wordsworth, for example, wrote “The Child is father of the Manâ€, although the normal literal use of words insists that a child’s father is a man; but of course there is a real meaning intended. (Our adult selves are formed by our childhood lives.)
Paradox and oxymoron can be hard to distinguish. As a rule of thumb, I would suggest that when a writer is deliberately trying to make an effect by contrast, it is an oxymoron; but if a contradiction exists in real life to which the writer is drawing attention, then it should be called a paradox. This is not, of course, true where a writer deliberately chooses to make paradoxes, and calls them by that name.
(In older times, paradox often meant an idea that was hard to believe, or that went against the orthodox view. In 1616, it was defined as: "an opinion maintained contrary to the common allowed opinion, as if one affirm that the earth doth move round, and the heavens stand still." (Bullokar, cited in OED; spelling modernised for AWE.))
