[Ryan Wepler]

Intro to Round 2
The first few language challenges for this week involve replacing expected words or phrases with funnier alternatives. Most verbal humor traffics heavily in these kinds of comic disruptions to familiar patterns of language. Their most common forms are metonymy and synecdoche:

metonymy – A figure of speech in which a thing or concept is called not by its own name but by the name of a thing closely associated with it. For example, referring to the film industry as “Hollywood” or a plate of food as a “dish.”

synecdoche – A figure of speech in which a term for a part of something is used to refer to the whole of that thing, or vice-versa. For example, referring to a congregation as “the church” or workers as “hired hands.”

Not all of this week’s word-replacement exercises ask for metonymies or synecdoches, but they are good concepts to keep in mind when trying to liven your comic texture.

Language Challenge #6: Long Replacement
On page 2 of A Walk in the Woods, Bryson could have written:

Nearly everyone I talked to had some gruesome story involving a guileless acquaintance who had gone off hiking the trail with high hopes and new boots and instead suffered a grievous injury.

What he did write is:

Nearly everyone I talked to had some gruesome story involving a guileless acquaintance who had gone off hiking the trail with high hopes and new boots and come stumbling back two days later with a bobcat attached to his head or dripping blood from an armless sleeve and whispering ‘Bear! ’ in a hoarse voice, before sinking into a troubled unconsciousness.

In the sentence below, replace “low self-esteem” with a long section of text that aims to be as hilarious as Bryson’s:

Brace yourself for an hour and a half of someone else’s [low self-esteem].

[Author]

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