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
