rhetorical Strategies list 20 Flashcards
Digression
a temporary departure from the main subject in speaking or writing.
Example: In A Midsummer Night’s Dream the central plot deals with the two couples: Lysander and Hermia; Demetrius and Helena; every scene which switches over to Theseus and Hippolyta, or to Oberon and Titania (and the fairies, etc.), could be considered a digression.
Double Entendre
the double meanings of a group of words, especially when the second meaning is impolite or risqué, that the speaker or writer has purposely left ambiguous.
Example “Marriage is a fine institution, but I’m not ready for an institution.” –Mae West
Negation
a grammatical construction that contradicts (or negates) part or all of a sentence’s meaning.
Example: “No zinc tub, no buckets of stove-heated water, no flaky, stiff, grayish towels washed in a kitchen sink, dried in a dusty backyard, no tangled black puffs of rough wool to comb.”–Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye
Overstatement:
deliberate exaggeration; hyperbole.
Example: “Well now, one winter it was so cold that all the geese flew backward and all the fish moved south and even the snow turned blue. Late at night, it got so frigid that all spoken words froze solid afore they could be heard. People had to wait until sunup to find out what folks were talking about the night before.”–”Paul Bunyon”
Antimetabole
Figure of emphasis in which the words in one phrase or clause are replicated, exactly, or closely, in reverse grammatical order in the next phrase or clause (A-B, B-A). Chiasmus and antimetabole are usually expected to be overlapped in usage and it is also often used as a synonym.
Example: “We do not stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.”
A B B A
– Benjamin Franklin
Epistrophe
the repetition of the same word or groups of words at the ends of phrases, clauses, or sentences.
Example: “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child.” (1 Corinthians 13:11).
Anadiplosis
the repetition of a word or words in successive clauses in such a way that the second clause starts with the same word which marks the end of the previous clause.
Example: “The general who became the slave. The slave who became the gladiator. The gladiator who defied an emperor. Striking story!”—Gladiator
Hypophora
a figure of reasoning in which one or more questions or objections is/are asked or stated and then answered by the speaker, usually at length.
Example: “When the enemy struck on that June day of 1950, what did America do? It did what it always has done in all its times of peril. It appealed to the heroism of its youth.” - Dwight D. Eisenhower
Anachronism
derived from a Greek word anachronous which means “against time”. Therefore, an anachronism is an error of chronology or timeline in a literary piece. In other words, anything that is out of time and out of place is an anachronism.
Example: If a painter paints a portrait of Aristotle and shows him wearing a wrist watch, it would be an example of anachronism, as we all are aware that wristwatches did not exist during Aristotle’s time.
Circumlocution
the use of unnecessarily wordy and indirect language to avoid getting to the point; an ambiguous or paradoxical way of expressing things, ideas or views.
Example: “That night Richard Penderell and I went to Mr. Pitchcroft’s, about six or seven miles off, where I found the gentleman of the house, and an old grandmother of his, and Father Hurlston, who had then the care as governor, of bringing up two young gentlemen, who, I think, were Sir John Preston and his brother, they being boys.” –Waddy
Contrast
showing how two or more texts, ideas or objects are different.
Example: “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun /
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red; /
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; /
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.” –Shakespeare
