Rhetorical operations

In classical rhetoric, figures of speech are classified as one of the four fundamental rhetorical operations or quadripartita ratio: addition (adiectio), omission (detractio), permutation (immutatio) and transposition (transmutatio).

The Latin Rhetorica ad Herennium (author unknown) from the 90s BCE, calls these four operations ἔνδεια, πλεονασμός, μετάθεσις and ἐναλλαγή.Philo of Alexandria (c. 25 BCE – c. 50 CE), writing in Greek, listed the operations as addition (πρόσθεσις), subtraction (ἀφαίρεσις), transposition (μετάθεσις), and transmutation (ἀλλοίωσις).Quintilian (c. 35 – c. 100) mentioned them in Institutio Oratoria (ca 95 CE).

Quintilian saw rhetoric as the science of the possible deviation from a given norm, or from a pre-existing text taken as a model. Each variation can be seen as a figure (figures of speech or figures of thought). From this perspective, Quintilian famously formulated four fundamental operations according to the analysis of any such variation.

Heinrich Lausberg offers one of the most complete and detailed summaries of classical rhetoric, from the perspective of Quintillian's four operations, in his 1960 treatise Handbook of literary rhetoric.

In 1970, the Belgian semioticians known under the name Groupe µ, reorganized the four operations. First they observed that the so-called transposition operation can be redefined as a series of addition and omission operations, so they renamed it as "omission-addition". They categorized the addition, omission and omission-addition operation as substantial operations, while they considered permutations as categorized permutation as relational operations.

They distinguished between partial and complete omissions; and between simple or repetitive additions. For an omission-addition operation, they considered it could be either partial, complete, or negative; a negative omission-addition operation is when it omits a unit and replaces it with its opposite.

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