FastEddie: Yanked...
-->A discussion of the trope concept is here: http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem07.html
... because the linked document may be the most boring list of words every produced. I'll preserve the link here, in case someone needs help with their insomnia.

{{Ununnilium}}: Now, now. It's probably perfectly lucid to someone who already knows what semiotics, rhetoric, and Derrida are. ...why it's titled "Semiotics for Beginners", I don't know.

MrEtaoinShrdlu: Yes, and just because it's boring doesn't mean it has no place here. Like the rule for adding, say, hentai to SoBadItsHorrible - if it's designed for a subculture and [[TheBarney despised by people outside that subculture]], it doesn't count unless it ''is also despised by people'' '''''in''''' ''that subculture.''

RRH: I just clipped a couple paragraphs that SciVo added to address some comments I made in YKTTW arguing about the "true" meaning of trope. I removed them because I think they would make no sense to anyone who hadn't already read the conversation in YKTTW. I don't think I can link to YKTTW discussions, but look up Cliche Does Not Equal Trope.

I think the "thanks to philosophical trope theory" paragraph is definitely off-target. Literature is much more likely to import words from linguistics than from philosophy; poll a dozen literature professors and see how many of them can define synecdoche compared to how many can define physicalism.

The link that FastEddie yanked is using, of course, what SciVo would classify as the linguistics definition. I think the "literature vs. linguistics" divide is false, the real divide is between the pedantic and the layman. Anyone with an amateur interest in linguistics is going to be very pedantic about how a word is defined, so their usage is less prone to drift.

So, if there should be something added to this entry to address the definition of Trope that I was previously used to, I think it should say, yes or no, whether a trope needs to be defined in terms of conveying information to the audience. As an example, in MetaTropeIntro, the example of using the brightness of an energy weapon to convey the power of the weapon would definitely be a trope, but "The butler did it" would be in dispute depending on how you address idea that a trope needs to convey information.

SciVo: Updated the entry to accurately reflect current usage.