Tropos, marcos de referencia y poderes

Abstract

Tropes such as metaphor, metonymy, synechdoche and irony were first recognized and systematically studied as rhetorical devices, but anthropologists have increasingly recognized that they constitute fundamental forms of relationship and association common to cultural representations and the pragmatics of social interaction. Interest in the pragmatics of interaction has also stimulated the analysis and theoretical elaboration of the notion of framing. Tropes and frames have almost invariably been treated, at least for theoretical purposes, in isolation from each other, by theorists with divergent interests. The thesis of the present paper, however, is that tropes and frames are constructs of the same kind, and normally operate interdependently as complementary levels of the same composite cultural representations. I argue, furthermore, that the interdependence of frames and tropes is integral to the understanding of how complex social and cultural forms such as ritual or political demonstrations generate power that can be projected beyond the frame in which the actions that produce the power take place, to cause effects in other frames.