digress

WordNet

lose clarity or turn aside especially from the main subject of attention or course of argument in writing, thinking, or speaking; "She always digresses when telling a story"; "her mind wanders"; "Dont digress when you give a lecture" (同)stray, divagate, wander
of superficial relevance if any; "a digressive allusion to the day of the week"; "a tangential remark" (同)tangential
(of e.g. speech and writing) tending to depart from the main point or cover a wide range of subjects; "amusingly digressive with satirical thrusts at womens fashions among other things"; "a rambling discursive book"; "his excursive remarks"; "a rambling speech about this and that" (同)discursive, excursive, rambling
wandering from the main path of a journey (同)excursion
a message that departs from the main subject (同)aside, excursus, divagation, parenthesis

PrepTutorEJDIC

(主題から)外れる,脱線する《+『from』+『名』》
(主題からの)脱線《+『from』+『名』》;余談

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出典(authority):フリー百科事典『ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』「2014/09/22 04:49:37」(JST)

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Digression (parekbasis in Greek, egressio, digressio and excursion in Latin) is a section of a composition or speech that is an intentional change of subject. In Classical rhetoric since Corax of Syracuse, especially in Institutio Oratoria of Quintilian, the digression was a regular part of any oration or composition. After setting out the topic of a work and establishing the need for attention to be given, the speaker or author would digress to a seemingly disconnected subject before returning to a development of the composition's theme, a proof of its validity, and a conclusion. A schizothemia is a digression by means of a long reminiscence.

Cicero was a master of digression, particularly in his ability to shift from the specific question or issue at hand (the hypothesis) to the more general issue or question that it depended upon (the thesis). As was the case with most ancient orators, Cicero's apparent digression always turned out to bear directly upon the issue at hand. During the Second Sophist (in Imperial Rome), the ability to guide a speech away from a stated theme and then back again with grace and skill came to be a mark of true eloquence.

Etymology

The term digression comes from the Latin word digressionem (nominative digressio): "a going away, departing," noun of action from past participle stem of digredi "to deviate," from dis- "apart, aside" (see dis-) + gradi "to step, go" (see grade (n.)).^[1]

Literary Implications and Examples

Digressions in a literary text serve a diverse array of functions such as a means to provide background information, a way to more thoroughly illustrate a point, and even a channel through which to satirize a subject. Put most simply, a device to emphasize a point through example or anecdote.

800-500 BCE

One of the earliest recorded users of digression is Homer in the Archaic period. He relies upon digression in his composition of The Iliad in order to provide his audience with a break from the primary narrative, to offer background information, and, most importantly, to enhance the story’s verisimilitude. Through these digressions Homer ensures his audience’s devotion to the characters and interest in the plot.

For example, in Book Eleven, Homer employs a mini-digression when Agamemnon comes upon brothers Peisandros and Hippolokhos in battle. After they come to Agamemnon as suppliants, he remembers that their father was one who denied Menelaos’ emissaries and “held out for killing [them] then and there.” ^[2] This short interlude from the action provides the audience with a critical fact about the beginning of the war and the nature of the opposing parties.

18th Century

In literature, the digression (not to be confused with subplot) was a substantial part of satiric works of the 18th century. Works such as Jonathan Swift's A Tale of a Tub, Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy and Diderot's Jacques le fataliste et son maître made digressiveness itself a part of the satire. Sterne's novel, in particular, depended upon the digression, and he wrote, "Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine; -- they are the life, the soul of reading; -- take them out of this book (Tristram Shandy) for instance, -- you might as well take the book along with them." ^[3] This use of digression as satire later showed up in Thomas Carlyle's work.

The digression was also used for non-satiric purposes in fiction. In Henry Fielding's The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, the author has numerous asides and digressive statements that are a side-fiction, and this sort of digression within chapters shows up later in the work of Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, Herman Melville, Victor Hugo and others. The novels of Leo Tolstoy, J.D. Salinger, Marcel Proust, Henry Miller, Milan Kundera and Robert Musil are also full of digressions.

20th Century

In late twentieth-century literature (in postmodern fiction), authors began to use digressions as a way of distancing the reader from the fiction and for creating a greater sense of play. John Fowles's The French Lieutenant's Woman and Lawrence Norfolk's Lemprière's Dictionary both employ digressions to offer scholarly background to the fiction, while others, like Gilbert Sorrentino in Mulligan Stew, use digression to prevent the functioning of the fiction's illusions.

Real Life Examples

Use of the digression is still noticeable in many sermons: after the topic, the speaker will introduce a "story" that seems to be unrelated, return to the subject, and then reveal how the story illustrates the speaker's point.

Speakers commonly use the phrase "but I digress..." to express a shift in subject. Unless the speaker ties his "digression" back into the subject at hand,though, that shift in subject does not strictly constitute a literary or rhetorical digression.

References

^ "Digression." Online Etymology Dictionary. Douglas Harper, n.d. Web. 2 Oct. 2013.
^ Homer. The Iliad. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2004. Print.
^ "Tristram Shandy." The Electronic Labrynth. Christopher Keep, Tim McLaughlin, Robin Parmar, n.d. Web. 2 Oct. 2013.

Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, vol IV.

Ross Chambers, Literature. University of Nebraska Press, 1999.

Maurice Laugaa, 'le théâtre de la digression dans le discours classique' in Semiotica IV, 1971.

Randa Sabry, Stratégies discursives, Editions de E.H.E.S.S., Paris, 1992. (known as the best historical and theorical study on the digression in literature and rhetoric. Written in French but still unavailable in English)

Christine Montalbetti & Nathalie Piegay-Gros, la digression dans le récit, Bertrand-Lacoste, Paris, 1994. (summary book for students)

Pierre Bayard, Hors-sujet : Proust et la digression, Editions de Minuit, Paris, 1996.

External links

Digressions are the soul of literature (archived)

English Journal

Triplex DNA:RNA, 3'-to-5' inverted RNA and protein coding in mitochondrial genomes.

Seligmann H.Author information National Natural History Museum Collections, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel. podarcissicula@gmail.comAbstractTriple-stranded DNA:RNA helices of unknown function in vertebrate mitochondria associate with replication and transcription. Antiparallel Hoogsteen pairings form triplexes at physiological conditions. Intermolecular antiparallel triplexes require inverted 3'-to-5' RNA polymerization, which was never observed. Three rare, long natural 3'-to-5' inverted GenBank RNAs from mice mitochondria suggest occasional inverted transcription, putatively coding for proteins. BLAST aligns 18 GenBank-stored proteins with hypothetical proteins translated from the 3'-to-5' inverted Mus musculus mitochondrial genome. Three are DNA-binding, five are membrane proteins. 25% of main frame codons contribute to their 3'-to-5' overlap coding. Properties of these codons match those of overlap coding protein genes, as compared to codons not expected involved in inverted coding: a) nucleotide contents at synonymous codon positions in mitochondrial genomes fit replicational deamination gradients (A->G and C->T), but digress from gradients when functioning as nonsynonymous positions in putative 3'-to-5' overlapping genes; b) bias against 'circular code' codons (codon groups creating unambiguity between frames), and favouring homogenous codons (AAA, CCC, GGG, TTT) characterize overlapping genes, including putative 3'-to-5' overlapping genes, as compared to nonoverlapping coding sequences from the same main frame gene. This signature correlates with digression from deamination gradients. Deamination and circular code tests confirm independently alignment-based predictions of overlapping 3'-to-5' protein coding genes. Results indicate varying expression for different 3'-to-5' overlapping genes. Inverted 3'-to-5' RNA is produced, perhaps by an unknown RNA polymerase (invertase) putatively coded by 3'-to-5' inverted RNA.
Journal of computational biology : a journal of computational molecular cell biology.J Comput Biol.2013 Sep;20(9):660-71. doi: 10.1089/cmb.2012.0134. Epub 2013 Jul 10.
Triple-stranded DNA:RNA helices of unknown function in vertebrate mitochondria associate with replication and transcription. Antiparallel Hoogsteen pairings form triplexes at physiological conditions. Intermolecular antiparallel triplexes require inverted 3'-to-5' RNA polymerization, which was never
PMID 23841652

Epidemiology of rheumatic musculoskeletal disorders in the developing world.

Chopra A, Abdel-Nasser A.Author information Centre for Rheumatic Diseases, Hermes Doctor House, 1988 Convent Street, Camp, Pune 411 001, India. crdp@vsnl.netAbstractThe epidemiology of rheumatic musculoskeletal (MSK) disorders in the developing world is much less well known than it is in the developed world. We expect ethnicity, traditions, socioeconomics and lifestyles to have an impact, but overall data are sparse. This report focuses on the WHO-ILAR COPCORD (community-oriented programme for control of rheumatic diseases). COPCORD was designed to collect community data on pain and disability in the developing economies. Several countries in Asia-Pacific and Central South America have completed COPCORD surveys. Despite some limitations in methodology, COPCORD provides a fair estimate of the spectrum and extent of rheumatic MSK disorders. We digress from a general overview to highlight the scenario for rheumatoid arthritis, and draw a few parallels with known statistics from the developed world. Overall, the emerging spectrum and severity are not very different, but in the developing countries the burden of disease, worsened by dismal rheumatology services, is likely to be staggering.
Best practice & research. Clinical rheumatology.Best Pract Res Clin Rheumatol.2008 Aug;22(4):583-604. doi: 10.1016/j.berh.2008.07.001.
The epidemiology of rheumatic musculoskeletal (MSK) disorders in the developing world is much less well known than it is in the developed world. We expect ethnicity, traditions, socioeconomics and lifestyles to have an impact, but overall data are sparse. This report focuses on the WHO-ILAR COPCORD
PMID 18783739

[Critical remarks regarding guidelines based on scientific research].

Nieweg OE.Author information Het Nederlands Kanker Instituut/Antoni van Leeuwenhoek Ziekenhuis, afd. Heelkunde, Plesmanlaan 121, 1066 CX Amsterdam. o.nieweg@nki.nlAbstractNational and international guidelines for diagnosis and treatment are increasingly applied as standards for medical interventions. Evidence-based consensus guidelines are not consistently based on the outcome of scientific studies. Recent research yielding inherent low-grade evidence is liable to be overruled by personal impressions, sentiments and common sense. Guidelines are based on the average patient, with a certain range. With increasing specialisation, one increasingly sees that doctors justifiably digress from a guideline when a patient differs substantially from the average.
Nederlands tijdschrift voor geneeskunde.Ned Tijdschr Geneeskd.2007 Jun 9;151(23):1272-5.
National and international guidelines for diagnosis and treatment are increasingly applied as standards for medical interventions. Evidence-based consensus guidelines are not consistently based on the outcome of scientific studies. Recent research yielding inherent low-grade evidence is liable to be
PMID 17624155

Lipoproteins: When size really matters.

German JB, Smilowitz JT, Zivkovic AM.Author information Department of Food Science and Technology, University of California Davis, 1 Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616, United States.AbstractThe field of nanoscience is extending the applications of physics, chemistry and biology into previously unapproached infinitesimal length scales. Understanding the behavior and manipulating the positions and properties of single atoms and molecules hold great potential to improve areas of science as disparate as medicine and computation, and communication and orbiting satellites. Yet, in the race to develop novel, previously unavailable nanoparticles, there is an opportunity for scientists in this field to digress and to apply their growing understanding of nanoscience and the tools of nanotechnology to one of the most pressing problems in all of human biology-diseases related to lipoproteins. Although not appreciated outside the field of lipoprotein biology, variations in the compositions, structures and properties of these nanoscale-sized, blood-borne particles are responsible for most of the variations in health, morbidity and mortality in the Western world. If the lipoproteins could be understood at the nanometer length scale with precise details of their structures and functions, scientists could understand a wide range of perplexing physiological processes and also address the dysfunctions in normal lipoprotein biology that lead to such diseases as hypercholesterolemia, heart disease, stroke and neurodegenerative diseases. Furthermore, if the capabilities of nanoscience to assemble and manipulate nanometer-sized particles could be recruited to studies of lipoproteins, these biological particles would provide a new dimension to therapeutic agents, and these natural particles could be designed to carry out many specialized beneficial tasks.
Current opinion in colloid & interface science.Curr Opin Colloid Interface Sci.2006 Jun;11(2-3):171-183.
The field of nanoscience is extending the applications of physics, chemistry and biology into previously unapproached infinitesimal length scales. Understanding the behavior and manipulating the positions and properties of single atoms and molecules hold great potential to improve areas of science a
PMID 20592953

Japanese Journal

発言者の主観的判断に基づき発言のエージング速度を個別選択可能とするチャットシステム

小倉加奈代,松本遥子,山内賢幸,西本一志
情報処理学会論文誌 52(4), 1608-1620, 2011-04-15
本論文では,流速が異なる複数の時間流を持つテキストチャットメディア"Kairos Chat"を提案する.対面口頭での対話では,人は議論の本筋とは関係のない逸脱発言を行うことにより,議論の円滑化を図っている.同時に,逸脱発言を急速に忘却し,重要な発言を選択的に長く記憶にとどめることで,議論記憶を自然に精錬化している.従来のチャットシステムには,単一の時間流しか存在せず,非選択的に全発言を記憶するため …
NAID 110008507994

「理念」からの逸脱-アルカーチイ・ドルゴルーキイ論

松本賢一
言語文化 3(2), 203-225, 2000-12
NAID 110000953376

Economical Illumination with Productivity:Calculation of Economical Illumillation Levels

小堀富次雄
照明学会雑誌 55(10), 601-606, 1971
… Generally, study of economical illumination is not considering productivity by lighting improvement, therefore, these studies are fear to digress from the actual conditions.<BR>Relations of Illumination Levels <I>E</I> …
NAID 130003924258