understatement
Understatement ( Engl. Understatement ) is a stylistic device that in the rhetoric has spread and other fields. It includes a weakening of a statement or an action.
rhetoric
An understatement often occurs in conjunction with a litote . The general contrast in rhetoric is exaggeration ( hyperbole ).
In the English-speaking area
In the English-speaking world , “ understatement ” means above all to express oneself less dramatically than one might expect in the face of dramatic situations.
Extreme understatement is also found in English humor , etc. a. from the Monty Python group. Example: When in a scene from The Meaning of Life at a dinner party the allegorical death ( grim reaper ., Eng " Grim Reaper will appear") to bring to all our guests commented dryly one of the guests: " Well, that's cast rather a gloom over the evening, hasn't it? "(German:" Well, that brought a little gloom into the evening, didn't it? ").
In the film Always Trouble with Harry , according to François Truffaut , a corpse is spoken of as if it were a pack of cigarettes. Hitchcock commented, "Nothing amuses me more than the comedy of understatement."
The greeting between Henry Morton Stanley and David Livingstone is not entirely historically guaranteed, but extremely famous . Stanley found Livingstone, who had been missing since 1869, after an eight-month search expedition leading over 11,000 kilometers through Central Africa on November 10, 1871 in Ujiji and addressed him with the phrase: “Dr. Livingstone, I presume? "(" Dr. Livingstone, I presume? ")
Also in journalism in the English-speaking world, e.g. B. the style of the BBC , understatements can be found. An example from journalism: In an interview with the BBC World Service in 2006, the Egyptian Foreign Minister commented on the civil war-like conditions in Iraq as follows: "I think there's a problem between Shias and Sunnis". (Eng: "I think there is a problem between the Shiites and the Sunnis ".)
Other areas
Using understatement in one's personal lifestyle means, for example, to forego certain status symbols outwardly , which, according to broader sections of the population, would have been expected. The English Duke of Cambridge , His Royal Highness Prince William , for example, was given a VW Golf instead of a luxury car after passing his driving test. With this attitude u. a. documents that you don't take yourself so seriously and that you would rather be underestimated than overestimated. In general, English understatement is also associated with stoic composure as a character trait of the English .
The downplaying is culturally determined and is related of power with a different understanding. According to Geert Hofstede, in regions with z. B. high power distance understatement rather not to be found. These countries include: B. Russia or the Arab Emirates. There is a lot of emphasis on documenting the social rank to the outside world (e.g. through status symbols).
In acting , understatements are often used to focus the audience's attention in a particular scene. See underplay .
The term understatement is also often used in the conception of advertising and marketing . Companies that rely on understatement in their public relations work forego superficial effects or trendy style elements.
literature
- Matthias Nöllke : Understatement. The pleasure of being underestimated. Herder Verlag, Freiburg 2016, ISBN 978-3-451-34258-5 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ “ Mr. Hitchcock, how did you do that? “, Heyne 1989, p. 224