Monday 10 August 2015

rhetoric - Does the type of play on words in "Some people are immune to good advice" have a name?

The phrases have an oxymoronic quality to them




a figure of speech in which opposite or contradictory ideas or terms are combined (Ex.: thunderous silence, sweet sorrow)




In the examples given, the modifiers are incongruously linked to terms that belie them. One is generally immune to bad things, not good, and one celebrates the positive, not the negative.

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