A darker shade of light
I recall my first experience of an oxymoron, though I didn’t know what it was called then. I was 9 and watching a TV show. A central character, a school bully, had turned to a schoolgirl seated next to him and whispered, ‘You’re pretty ugly.’
Pretty ugly, I repeated mentally, perplexed, savouring words that had no business being together. Then I was tickled.
Oxymorons are words or phrases that have opposing meanings and appear to contradict each other when placed side by side. The word ‘oxymoron’ derives from the Greek word oxys (‘sharp, pointed’) and moros (‘stupid’): ‘pointedly foolish’.
Oxymorons are figures of speech that are designed to create a rhetorical effect (e.g. humour, irony, emphasis) or provoke readers to think more deeply about a paradox. As the examples below show, the contradiction can occur at the level of words, phrases or sentences:
bittersweet
cheerful pessimist
less is more
‘To lead people, walk behind them.’ (A statement attributed to Lao Tzu.)
‘I shut my eyes in order to see.’ (A statement attributed to Paul Gauguin.)
‘There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe them.’ (A statement attributed to George Orwell.)
And who hasn’t heard of ‘alone together’ which, though over-used, is so apt in these pandemic times? (For more examples of oxymorons, see Nordquist.)
Oxymorons can also be used to filter reality. In his dystopian book Nineteen eighty-four, Orwell explored the use of fictional language called Newspeak, which juxtaposes key contradictory terms, to promote doublethink – the acceptance of two contradictory beliefs at the same time – and restrict critical thinking among its populace.
If Orwell’s dystopia was not the first to use oxymorons this way, it certainly isn’t the last. In 1982 President Reagan coined a new name for the intercontinental ballistic missile that was to be a strategic nuclear weapon against the then Soviet Union: Peacekeeper missile.
Anthropologists have also noted the use of oxymorons by corporations to soften the impact of words that are unpalatable, even harmful, to publicly communicate their activities. According to Benson and Kirsch, the pairing of language of social responsibility (e.g. ‘safe’, ‘sustainable’) with products and activities (e.g. cigarettes, mining) tacitly acknowledges that a problem exists but promotes doubt about the harms that are caused because the joined-up phrase (e.g. ‘safe cigarettes’, ‘sustainable mining’) suggests the scale of the problem is somehow acceptable or containable, despite the inherent contradiction of the words.
My unbiased opinion? Oxymorons are versatile chameleons: be aware of what they’re capable of. While they can highlight paradoxes, they can also mollify resistance to what is uncomfortable.
