Well, as I explained earlier in class, I have no idea what the true meaning of the word "trope" is as it is used by Trey. So I began to associate the word as he used it to the word smurf, as the smurfs used it.
Trope - In linguistics, trope is a rhetorical figure of speech that consists of a play on words, i.e., using a word in a way other than what is considered its literal or normal form. The other major category of figures of speech is the scheme, which involves changing the pattern of words in a sentence.
Trope comes from the Greek word, tropos, which means a "turn". We can imagine a trope as a way of turning a word away from its normal meaning, or turning it into something else.
Smurfs - The Smurfs (Les Schtroumpfs in French) are a fictional group of small sky blue creatures who live somewhere in the forests of Europe. The Belgian cartoonist Peyo introduced Smurfs to the world in a series of comic strips, but English-speakers perhaps know them best through the animated television series from Hanna-Barbera Productions, The Smurfs.
Smurf language
A characteristic of the smurf language is the frequent use of the word "smurf" and derivatives of it in a variety of meanings. The smurfs replace enough nouns and verbs in everyday speech with smurf as to make their conversations barely understandable: "We're going smurfing on the River Smurf today."
It was implied a number of times that the smurfs all understood each other due to subtle variations in intonation that Johan or PeeWit (or the viewers) could not detect.
So that the viewer of the animated series is able to understand the Smurfs, only some words (or a portion of the word) is replaced with the word "smurf". Context offers a reliable understanding of this speech pattern, but common vocabulary includes remarking that something is "just smurfy" or "smurftastic".
In Schtroumpf vert et vert Schtroumpf, published in Belgium in 1972, it was revealed that the village was divided between North and South and that the smurfs on either side had different ideas as to whether the term "smurf" should be used as a verb or as a noun: for instance, the northern smurfs call a certain object a "bottle opsmurf", while the southern smurfs call it a "smurf opener".
Papa Smurf himself kept out of the argument, having more important things on his mind. But when the conflict led to all-out war he had to resort to desperate measures to restore order.
This story is considered as a parody on the taalstrijd (language war) between French and Dutch speaking communities still present in Belgium.
smurf-tastic = trope-tastic
smurfberry pie = tropeberry pie
papa smurf = papa trope
etc...
My brain on Trey's pedagogy. (unicef bombs the smurf villiage) The Dutch at the end translates to "War does not let devastate the world of the children"
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