Rhetorical Devices
The art of using language and
argumentation effectively.
What are rhetorical devices?
• techniques an author uses to evoke an
emotional response to manipulate an
audience’s thoughts, reactions, and
impressions
• they are used for emphasis, association,
clarification, focus, organization, transition,
arrangement, decoration, and variety
Alliteration
• Repetition of the initial consonant sounds
beginning several words in sequence.
– "....we shall not falter, we shall not fail."
(President G.W. Bush Address to Congress following
9-11-01 Terrorist Attacks.)
– "Let us go forth to lead the land we love.“
(President J. F. Kennedy, Inaugural 1961)
– "Veni, vidi, vici.“
(Julius Caesar - “I came, I saw, I conquered”)
Alliteration in Advertising
• Can you identify
alliteration in this
advertisement for
Walgreens?
Allusion
• A reference to someone or something that is
known from history, literature, art, religion,
politics, sports, science, mythology, folk tales or
some other branch of culture
--“Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was
misunderstood, and Socrates …and Copernicus, and Galileo,
and Newton…To be great is to be misunderstood.” (“Self
Reliance” by Ralph Waldo Emerson)
–
What figure from mythology is being
alluded to in this cartoon?
Antithesis
• A rhetorical device in which two ideas are
directly opposed.
– “It was a blessing and a curse.”
Chiasmus
• Rhetorical inversion of the second of two
parallel structures.
– “He went to the country, to the town went
she.”
Counterargument
• A way to appeal to logos (logic) by
anticipating objections or opposing views
• Strengthens argument because it shows
you’ve carefully considered your subject
• In acknowledging a counterargument, you
agree that an opposing argument may be
true, but then you deny the validity of all or
part of the argument
Diction
• A speaker’s or writer’s choice of words
• Diction can be formal, informal, colloquial,
full of slang, poetic, etc.
• Diction has a powerful effect on the tone of
a piece of writing
Juxtaposition
• The arrangement of two or more ideas,
characters, actions, settings, phrases or
words side by side in order to
compare/contrast the two
• Writers often juxtapose gentle characters with
violent characters, old characters with young
characters, and rich characters with poor
characters
• Set up a character as being popular with the
opposite sex then reveal s/he is a virgin
• Showing images of war, violence, and poverty with
the song “What a Wonderful World” playing in the
background
Parallelism
• Repetition of same or similar grammatical
structures
• One of the most useful and flexible rhetorical
devices
– "....we shall not falter, we shall not fail."
(President G.W. Bush Address to Congress following 9-11-01
Terrorist Attacks.)
– “…that government of the people, by the people, for the
people shall not perish from the Earth.” (President Abraham
Lincoln Gettysburg Address)
– “Tell me, and I forget. Teach me, and I may remember.
Involve me, and I will learn.” (Benjamin Franklin)
Repetition
• When an author or speaker repeats a
word, phrase, or idea more than once
• The rhetorical reasons for using repetition
are:
• Emphasizes importance of word, phrase, or idea
• Ensures audience is paying attention (something
important coming)
Types of Repetition
• Anadiplosis – repetition of a prominent word as the last and first word
of two phrases or clauses; it ties the sentence to its surroundings
– “The mountains look on Marathon—
And Marathon looks on the sea…” Lord Byron
• Anaphora – the repetition of introductory words or phrases for effect.
– “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of
wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it
was the epoch of incredulity” – Charles Dickens
• Epanalepsis – repetition at the end of a clause of the word that
occurred at the beginning of the clause
– “Next time there won’t be a next time.”
• Epistrophe – repetition of the same word or group of words at the ends
of successive clauses
– “The government is of the people, by the people and for the
people.”
Rhetorical Question
• A question asked for effect and that does
not actually require an answer because
the answer should be obvious
– “Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love
and reconciliation?… Has Great Britain any enemy, in
this quarter of the world, to call for all this
accumulation of navies and armies?” (Patrick Henry,
“Speech to the Virginia Convention”)
– “It is really time to ask ourselves, ‘How can we allow
the rich and powerful, not only to rip off people as
consumers, but to continue to rip them off as
taxpayers?” (Ralph Nader, 2000 NAACP Convention
Address)
Hyperbole
• obvious exaggeration for emphasis or
effect
– I have a million things to do today.
– I told you a thousand times!
– When I was a kid, I had to walk fifteen miles to
school uphill in five feet of snow.
Sarcasm (Verbal Irony)
• Usually a harsh, personally directed
comment
• Saying one thing, yet meaning something
else
– Referring to a someone as “a
delight” when he/she is miserable
to be around
– In Romeo and Juliet, when
Romeo asks Mercutio if his wound
is slight, Mercutio responds,
“Aye, a scratch”
Understatement
• A statement that says less than what is
meant
• The opposite of hyperbole
– If you are sitting down to enjoy a ten-course
meal and say, “Ah! A little snack before
bedtime,” you are using an understatement to
emphasize the tremendous amount of food
you are about to eat
– “I have to have an operation. It isn’t very
serious. I have this small tumor in my brain.”
Polysyndeton
• Deliberate use of many conjunctions for special
emphasis – to highlight quantify or mass of detail
or to create a flowing, continuous sentence
pattern.
• EX: The meal was huge – my mother fixed
green beans and ham and apple pie and green
pickled tomatoes and ambrosia salad and all
manner of fine country food – but no matter how
I tried, I could not consume it to her satisfaction.
Asyndeton
• Deliberate omission
of conjunctions in a
series of related
clauses.
• EX: “I came, I saw, I
conquered” (Julius
Caesar).
Zeugma
• The use of a verb that
has two different
meanings with objects
that complement both
meanings.
• EX: He stole both her
car and her heart that
fateful night.
Stichomythia
• Dialogue in which the endings and beginnings of each
line echo each other, taking on a new meaning with each
new line.
Hamlet: Now mother, what’s the matter?
Queen: Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.
Hamlet: Mother, you have my father much offended.
Queen: Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.
Hamlet: Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.
Rhetorical Devices in Ads
• How many rhetorical
devices can you find?
Parallelism
Alliteration
Repetition
Rhetorical Devices in Ads
• How many rhetorical
devices can you find?
Alliteration
Rhetorical Question
Hyperbole
Rhetorical Device Review
1) What rhetorical device is being used in
this line from Sojourner Truth’s speech?
“That man over there says that women need to
be helped into carriages … Nobody ever helps
me into carriages …And ain’t I a woman?”
a)
b)
c)
d)
Alliteration
Counterargument
Understatement
Parallelism
Rhetorical Device Review
2) Change the underlined portion of the sentence
below to make the diction more formal.
“He invented a really nifty device called the
telephone.”
a) super terrific
b) truly innovative
c) incredibly amazing
d) really useful
Rhetorical Device Review
3) “I’m so hungry I could eat a horse” is an
example of what rhetorical device?
a) juxtaposition
b) sarcasm
c) hyperbole
d) understatement
Rhetorical Device Review
4) “I’m just taking a little trip up Mount
Everest” is an example of what rhetorical
device?
a) juxtaposition
b) alliteration
c) hyperbole
d) understatement
Rhetorical Device Review
5) What rhetorical devices are being employed in
the following famous book passage?
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of
wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was
the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of
Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we
had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going
direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the
period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest
authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the
superlative degree of comparison only.”
~from A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
a) Juxtaposition
b) Parallelism
c) Repetition
d) All of the above