Rhetorical Techniques Flashcards
“Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our Northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.”
Kairos
An appeal to time, saying that we have to act now
“This toothpaste is recommended by 90% of dentists over other ones/No animals harmed in the production of this toothpaste”
Ethos
Appeals to either credibility or ethics
“You’ve made a mistake. I can’t be a wizard. I mean, I’m just Harry, just Harry.”
“Well, just Harry, did you ever make anything happen? Anything you couldn’t explain, when you were angry or scared?”
Logos (and repetition - epimone and parataxis)
An appeal to logic
Use of sad children’s faces on charity advertisements
Pathos
An appeal to emotion
“The good stuff - think about it”
Anacoluthon (synesis)
Grammatical discontinuity to abruptly change topic/emphasise something.
“No pain, no gain”
Antithesis (juxtoposition, idiom, proverb, synesis - anacoluthon, parataxis)
Parallel juxtaposition of two opposites
“Call up her father.
Rouse him. Make after him, Poison his delight,
Proclaim him in the streets. Incense her kinsmen,”
Asyndeton (antistrophe/epistrophe/epiphora)
No conjunctions
When nothing occurs,
and summer is gone,
and leaves start to fall off the trees,
and the cold rusts the edges of rivers,
and slows down the flow of waters;
when the sky seems a violent sea,
and birds swap landscapes,
and words sound more and more distant,
like whispers strewn by the wind;
Polysyndeton
Many conjunctions
Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
Hypallage (repetition - epimone, diction - present participle)
Uses a modifier that doesn’t modify what it should
I had been and I am
Hyperbaton/anastrophe (Rhetorical parallelism)
Inverted word order
The unwary individual who on entering takes a few steps is soon unable to find the opening. Worn out, with nothing to eat or drink, in the dark, separated from his dear ones, and from everything he loves and is accustomed to, he walks on without knowing anything or hoping anything, incapable even of discovering whether he is really going forward or merely turning round on the same spot.
Hypotaxis (and some Parataxis and synthetic parallelism)
Employment of dependent clauses to create hierarchy of clause relevance.
Twenty-two years old, weak, hot, frightened
Parataxis
Equally weighted sentence components to make them equal
“I will have such revenges on you both”
Synesis (anacoluthon)
Gramatical inaccuracy to convey emotion
“What? No! I don’t want that thing”
When you want it
Accismus
Feigned indifference
I said to my daughter on the phone: Be an honest person,
just be an honest person. Be honest, be honest, be honest.
Anecdote (repetition - epinome)
A story to convey an idea
“You ate all the Oreos”
“Yeah but you ate the whole pecan pie last week”
Antanagoge
Replying to an allegation with another one
“I’m not sure where to begin”
Aporia
Feigned uncertainty
You’re a foul one, Mr. Grinch, You’re a nasty wasty skunk, Your heart is full of unwashed socks, your soul is full of gunk, Mr. Grinch. The three words that best describe you are as follows, and I quote, “Stink, stank, stunk!
Bdelygmia
A barrage of insults
Amplification is a rhetorical device.
Amplification uses language to persuade the audience.
Enthymeme
Skipping a premise as it’s obvious
What is the point of learning these techniques? To help you with analysis
Hypophora
Answering your own question
I may be asked, why I am so anxious to bring this subject before the British public—why I do not confine my efforts to the United States? My answer is…
Procatalepsis
Raising a potential rebuttal and adressing it directly
The sun cannot orbit the Earth. Otherwise, the Earth would be 1,000,000 times the size of the sun!
Reductio ad absurdum
Taking something to its extreme
FLAVIUS.
“Have you forgot me, sir?”
TIMON.
“Why dost ask that? I have forgot all men;
Then, if thou grant’st thou’rt a man, I have forgot thee.”
Syllogism (logos)
A logical argument with premises and a conclusion
“Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand?”
Adynaton
An extreme hyperbole
If a person has ugly thoughts, it begins to show on the face. And when that person has ugly thoughts every day, every week, every year, the face gets uglier and uglier until you can hardly bear to look at it.A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts it will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.
Amplification
Using superfluous words to draw attention to ideas that evade readers.
“Take your time, we’ve got all day”
Antiphrasis
Using words sarcastically to convey the opposite
“Looky here…”
Asterismos
Introductory interjections drawing attention to ideas.
“Not bad!”
Litotes
A double negative to convey the opposite
(after being stabbed)
MERCUTIO.
Ay, ay, a scratch, a scratch.
Meiosis
A witty understatement
“It was Gatsby’s mansion. Or rather, as I did not yet know Mr. Gatsby, it was a mansion inhabited by a gentleman of that name.”
Metanoi
Immediate self-correction
“Not to mention…”
Paralipsis/Praeteritio
Performative refusal to speak on a topic
“You should’ve seen the fish I caught — it was as big as my leg!”
Overstatement
An intentional exaggeration to emphasise a point rather than a fact.
“It was fan-bloody-tastic”
Tmesis
Word/phrase embedded in another word/phrase
“Someone in Hell is sitting beside you on the train.
Somebody burning unnoticed walks past in the street”
Adnomination
Words with repeating roots
“That all the world shall— I will do such things,—
What they are, yet I know not: but they shall be
The terrors of the earth.”
Aposipesis (ellipsis)
Unfinished sentence
“He didn’t have the best schooling growing up.”
“He’s stupid”
Circumlocution (euphemism)
Using long words when short word do trick
“Grandpa croaked”
“He died” or “He is no more”
Dysphemism
Using vulgar words rather than neutral/euphemistic alternatives.
“I rode the train not the bus”
“I rode the train [but I did] not [ride] the bus”
Ellipsis
An omission of some words to make the reader fill in the blanks
“Veni, vidi, vici”
Isocolon
Parallelism with equal number of words/syllables
“I saw it with my very own two eyes”
“I saw it with my eyes”
Pleonasm
Intentional redundancy
