What's the difference between theme and trope?

Theme


Definition:

  • (n.) A subject or topic on which a person writes or speaks; a proposition for discussion or argument; a text.
  • (n.) Discourse on a certain subject.
  • (n.) A composition or essay required of a pupil.
  • (n.) A noun or verb, not modified by inflections; also, that part of a noun or verb which remains unchanged (except by euphonic variations) in declension or conjugation; stem.
  • (n.) That by means of which a thing is done; means; instrument.
  • (n.) The leading subject of a composition or a movement.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) A world conference in Edinburgh during August 1988 will have the theme.
  • (2) That, roughly, was the theme of the Wednesday Play, Cathy Come Home, (BBC1) directed by Kenneth Loach, produced by Tony Garnett.
  • (3) as well as nauseatingly hipster titbits – "They came up with the perfect theme (and coined a new term!
  • (4) Sometimes it can seem as if the history of the City is the history of its crises and disasters, from the banking crisis of 1825 (which saw undercapitalised banks collapse – perhaps the closest historic parallel to the contemporary credit crunch), through the Spanish panic of 1835, the railway bust of 1837, the crash of Overend Gurney, the Kaffir boom, the Westralian boom, the Marconi scandal, and so on and on – a theme with endless variations.
  • (5) By no means is this a new theme, but it has taken on an added sharpness and urgency after the conferences.
  • (6) An obsessional artist who was an enemy of all institutions, cinematic as well as social, and whose principal theme was intolerance, he invariably gets delivered to us today by institutions - most recently the National Film Theatre, which starts a Dreyer retrospective this month - that can't always be counted on to represent him in all his complexity.
  • (7) Read more Clinton spoke before more than a thousand supporters on Saturday at a launch event for “Women for Hillary” in New Hampshire, touching upon many of the familiar themes of her presidential campaign – equal pay for women, paid family leave, raising the minimum wage.
  • (8) The Christmas theme doesn't end there; "America's Christmas Hometown" also has Santa's Candy Castle, a red-brick building with turrets that was built by the Curtiss Candy Company in the 1930s and sells gourmet candy canes in abundance.
  • (9) Similar paradoxes bedevilled all the other chief themes.
  • (10) Synthesis and discussion is focused on five major areas in which gerontological continuity and change are evidenced: 1) transformation of basic themes over time; 2) gerontology's identity crisis; 3) the social ideology of gerontology; 4) evolution and refinement of gerontological ideas and methods; and 5) temporal frameworks.
  • (11) A key theme is expected to be that early intervention at every stage of life can prevent society having to continue "paying for the costs of failure".
  • (12) One constant theme is the wish for the Dalai Lama to return."
  • (13) The national anthems Nothing to say about the Indian anthem, but the New Zealand one sounds like the theme tune for an 1960s ATV variety spectacular.
  • (14) Ever since the ex-PD leader Walter Veltroni started praising President Kennedy as a way to jettison communism, this has been an abiding theme, manifesting itself institutionally in the desperate attempt to engineer a US-style two-party system through breathtakingly inept electoral reforms – the latest one, the " Porcellum " (after porcello, swine), was behind the impasse earlier this year.
  • (15) Ladybird: I’m Ready to Spell has a space theme, and is based on the phonics that kids will be learning in their first years at school.
  • (16) Bleak jokes and cartoons have been circulating for weeks in the anti-Assad camp on the theme of barrel bombs serving as ballot boxes.
  • (17) Redesigning the dream was identified as the integrative theme in the substantive theory that described how family members gradually modify their beliefs about organ transplantation and develop attitudes and beliefs to meet the challenge of living with continual unpredictability.
  • (18) Oil operators, large and small, are very keen to address the key themes of the waste hierarchy.
  • (19) And they kept coming … the hilarious Octodad: Dadliest Catch , the chilling psychological horror game Daylight , which again, uses procedural generation to create new environments (procedural content is another next-gen theme); and Galak-Z from 17bit Studios, described as an AI and physics-driven open-world action game.
  • (20) Cross-sectional as well as longitudinal comparisons indicated that the subjective sexual arousal elicited during fantasy depicting specific themes was stable across the menstrual cycle.

Trope


Definition:

  • (n.) The use of a word or expression in a different sense from that which properly belongs to it; the use of a word or expression as changed from the original signification to another, for the sake of giving life or emphasis to an idea; a figure of speech.
  • (n.) The word or expression so used.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) For further education, this would be my priority: a substantial increase in funding and an end to tinkering with the form of qualifications and bland repetition of the “parity of esteem” trope.
  • (2) Arguing for a new nation state, the white paper understands that the old tropes of nationhood will no longer do, though until recently they sustained the anglophobic tendency of everyday nationalism, though until recently they sustained the anglophobic tendency of everyday nationalism.
  • (3) Ihave never really liked the liberal-left trope of Britain's "progressive majority", lately talked up by people campaigning for AV .
  • (4) Ivens's apology was issued after a meeting with Jewish community organisations including the Board of the Deputies of British Jews, which had complained to the Press Complaints Commission on Sunday, describing the cartoon as "appalling" and "all the more disgusting" for being published on Holocaust Memorial Day, "given the similar tropes levelled against Jews by the Nazis".
  • (5) As the report explains, researchers have long pointed to a widely believed cultural script of what constitutes a “real” rape – the trope of the lone lady being attacked at night as she made her way home through dark alleys.
  • (6) Purnell has long argued it is time to discard the old tropes of Brownite and Blairite.
  • (7) Melgaard pays poor lip service to these racist tropes, arguing that "racism is a form of sexuality.
  • (8) By focusing on Spock and Kirk as novices finding their footing, and putting their gut-vs-logic dynamic at the heart of the film, Abrams gives non-followers plenty to hang on to, but also pays homage to familiar Trek tropes: Bones says: "I'm a doctor, not a physicist!
  • (9) Her main project is new girl Tai (the late Brittany Murphy) who arrives at school as a clumsy, unconfident "ugly duckling" ripe for making over – allowing the film to indulge in that wonderful 80s teen movie trope: the dressing up montage.
  • (10) Instead, we returned to the old political tropes: a prime minister outside Downing street, backbenchers grousing on rolling news channels, financial experts delighted outside City buildings and Nigel Farage on College Green, standing outside the palace he wants to get in.
  • (11) You know you are desperate for ratings when you are willing to violate the law to push a story about two pages of tax returns from over a decade ago,” it said in a statement emailed to journalists with unusual zeal and which also repeated the Trump trope of “the dishonest media”.
  • (12) All these silly tropes appear in the first episode of My Transsexual Summer, Channel 4's new primetime reality doc .
  • (13) It takes the usual prison TV tropes of bent screws, lesbian affairs, claustrophobic pettiness and racial divides, and makes them seem fresh, skewing our perspectives in unexpected ways.
  • (14) Trump and his appeal embody certain universal tropes about bullying, humiliation and comedy.
  • (15) And the presence of the miniature handwritten note on textured paper is so Andersonesque as to make this essentially a trope magnified by a trope.
  • (16) It’s a trope that often plays an important part in the narrative of zombie stories.
  • (17) Recent months have seen a number of white, A-list pop artists such as Lily Allen, Iggy Azalea and Taylor Swift come under fire for appropriating black music tropes and perpetuating damaging stereotypes.
  • (18) It is a favoured trope of Nigel Farage and his fellow-travellers that the “Westminster elite” doesn’t want to talk about immigration.
  • (19) Is there a danger that – using the now-standard tropes of a strong sense of place, a dysfunctional detective, a haunting soundtrack and brutal crimes – the series will be seen as just another exercise in noir?
  • (20) No doubt it will soon make a comeback, but for now the “reform is stuck” trope has descended into an unedifying and largely evidence-free “debate” over penalty rates .