Rhetorical Devices
Tropes
• A rhetorical device in which MEANING is
altered from the usual or expected.
Schemes
• A rhetorical device in which WORD
ORDER is altered from the usual or
expected.
Kinds of Tropes
Metaphor
• An implied comparison between two unlike
things
• Example:
“True art is a conduit between body and ,
soul, between feeling unabstracted and
abstraction unfelt.”
John Gardner, On Moral Fiction
Simile
• An explicit comparison between two unlike
things signaled by the use of “like” or “as.”
• Example:
“Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch
small flies, but let wasps and hornets break
through.”
Jonathan Swift, “A Critical Essay Upon Faculties of the
Mind”
Synecdoche
• A whole is represented by naming some of
its parts.
• Translated from Greek, means
“understanding one thing for another.”
• Example:
“Nice wheels”
Metonymy
• Reference to something or someone by
naming one of its attributes.
• Example:
The head of the council is called the
“chair.”
Personification
• Attributing human qualities to an inanimate
object.
• Example:
The clock cast a watchful eye over the class
as they wrote their essay.
Puns (3 types)
• Repetition of a single word in two different
senses.
• Example:
“But if we don’t hang together, we will
hang separately.”
Benjamin Franklin
Puns cont.
• A play on words that sound alike but are
different in meaning.
• Example:
He couldn’t get his bearings straight in the
Bering Strait.
Puns cont.
• Antanaclasis: Use of a single word with two
different meanings within the context of the
sentence.
• Example:
The ink, like our pig, keeps running out of
the pen.
Onomatopoeia
• The use of words whose sound reinforces
their meanings.
• Examples: drip, crackle, ban, snarl, pop
Euphemism
• Substituting less pungent words for harsh
ones, with excellent ironic effect.
• Example:
The schoolmaster corrected the slightest
fault with his birch reminder.
Hyperbole
• Deliberate exaggeration for emphasis.
• Example:
“Four hostile newspapers are more to be
feared than a thousand bayonets.”
Attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte
Litotes
• A deliberate understatement
• Intensifies an idea by understatement
• Example:
“It wasn’t my best moment.”
Rhetorical Question—Type 1
• Asking the reader
• Greeks viewed this as a way of taking
counsel with the reader.
• Example:
“What would you have done in these
circumstances?”
Rhetorical Question—Type 2
• Asking the writer
• Suggests the writer’s thinking process
• Example:
“What was it I really wanted?”
Rhetorical Question—Type 3
• Criticizing—makes a criticism in the form
of a question
• Example:
“How can citizens fail to vote?”
Rhetorical Question—Type 4
• Asking and answering
• Sometimes serves as a way to organize a
writer’s arguments
Irony
• Means “liar” or “dissembler”
• Allows the writer to take another voice or
role that states the opposite of what is
expressed.
“The new swimming pool was an important
addition to the campus, even though library
funds had to be cut back. After all, we
wouldn’t want our students to go without
the little luxuries they are accustomed to.”
Oxymoron
• Two contradictory terms used together
• “Parting is such sweet sorrow.”
Paradox
• A statement that appears to be
contradictory, but, in fact, has some truth.
• Example:
“He worked hard at being lazy.”
Apostrophe
• “Turning away” from the audience to
address someone new—God, heaven,
angels, the dead…anyone not present.
• Example:
“Death, where is thy sting?”
Schemes
Parallelism
• Expresses similar or related ideas in similar
grammatical structures.
• Example:
“Hell is gaping for them, the Devil is
waiting for them…”
Climax
• Writer arranges ideas in order of importance
• Example:
I spent the day cleaning the house, reading
poetry, and putting my life in order.
Antithesis
• The juxtaposition of contrasting ideas
• Example:
‘Our knowledge separates as well as unites;
our orders disintegrate as well as bind…”
Anaphora
• Repetition of the same word or phrase at the
beginning of successive phrases or clauses.
• Example:
“We shall fight on the beaches, we shall
fight on the landing grounds…”
Epistrophe
• Repetition of the same word or group of
words a the ends of successive clauses.
• Example:
Shylock: I’ll have my bond! Speak not
against my bond! I have sworn an oath that
I will have my bond!
Epanalepsis
• Repeating at the end of a clause the word
that occurred at the beginning.
• Example:
“Blood hath brought blood, and blows
answer’d blows…” King John
Alliteration
• Repetition of the same sound at the
beginning of successive words.
• Example:
“We shall not flag or fail.”
Assonance
• Repetition of sounds within words
• Example:
“The heave’e’yo of stevedores…”
Anastrophe
• Word order is reversed or rearranged.
• In Greek it means “turning back”
• Example:
“Unseen in the jungle, but present, are
tapirs, jaguars, many species of snake…”
Parenthesis
• The insertion of words, phrases, or a
sentence that is not syntactically related to
the rest of the sentence.
• Set off by dashed or parentheses
• Example:
“He said it would rain—I could hardly
disagree—before the game was over.”
Apposition
• The placing next to a noun another noun or
phrase that explains it.
• Example:
“Pollution, the city’s biggest problem, is an
issue.”
Asyndenton
• Conjunctions are omitted, producing a fastpaced and rapid prose.
• Example:
“I came, I saw, I conquered.”
Polysyndenton
• The use of many conjunctions has an
opposite effect—slowing the pace.
• Example:
“I kept remembering everything—the small
steamboat that we rode on, and how quietly
she ran on the moonlight sails, and how
sweet the music was on the water, and what
it felt like to think about girls then.”