Rhetorical Devices
Rhetorical Devices
Anecdote: A brief story or tale told by author/speaker/character in order to illustrate a point, or
reinforce the point
Perspective: A person's view of the situation or events in the situation
Aphorism: A concise statement designed to make a point or illustrate a commonly held belief.
The writings of Benjamin Franklin contain many aphorisms, such as "Early to bed
and early to rise/Make a man healthy, wealthy, and wise."
Contradiction: A direct opposition between things compared; inconsistency
Oxymoron: A figure of speech that combines two apparently contradictory elements, as in
"jumbo shrimp" or "deafening silence."
Allusion: A figure of speech which makes brief, even casual reference to a historical or literary
figure, event, or object to create a resonance in the reader/audience
Syllogism: A form of deduction. An extremely subtle, sophisticated, or deceptive argument
Satire: A literary style used to make fun of or ridicule an idea or human vice or weakness
Devices: A particular word pattern or combination of words used in a literary work to evoke a
desired effect or arouse a desired reaction in the reader
Foil: A person or thing that makes another seem better by contrast
Parody: A satirical imitation of a work of art for purpose of ridiculing its style or subject.
Delayed sentence: A sentence that withholds its main idea until the end.
For example, "Just as he bent to tie his shoe, a car hit him."
Sarcasm: A sharp caustic remark. A form of verbal irony in which apparent praise is actually
bitterly or harshly critical.
For example, a coach saying to a player who misses the ball, "Nice catch."
Expletive: A single word or short phrase intended to emphasize surrounding words. Commonly,
expletives are set off by commas. Examples: in fact, of course, after all, certainly
Irony: A situation or statement characterized by significant difference between what is expected
or understood and what actually happens or is meant. Irony is frequently humorous, and
can be sarcastic when using words to imply the opposite of what they normally mean
Paradox: A statement that seems contradictory, but is actually true.
Epiphany: A sudden or intuitive insight or perception into the reality or essential meaning of
something usually brought on by a simple or common occurrence or experience
Diction: An author's choice of words to convey a tone or effect
Utopia: An imaginary place of ideal perfection. The opposite of a dystopia. —An imaginary place
where people live dehumanized, often fearful lives.
Hyperbole: An overstatement characterized by exaggerated language
Antagonist: Character or force in a literary work that opposes the main character, or
protagonist
Identification of the antagonist can be essential in persuasive writings and
speeches
Analogy: Comparison of two things that are alike in some respects. Metaphors and similes are
both types of analogy
Inductive: Conclusion or type of reasoning whereby observation or information about a part of a
class is applied to the class as a whole. Contrast with deductive.
Nostalgia: Desire to return in thought or fact to a former time
Chiasmus: Figure of speech by which the order of the terms in the first of the parallel clauses
is reversed in the second.
“Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”
“Has the Church failed mankind, or has mankind failed the Church?” T.S. Eliot
Thesis:Focus statement of an essay; premise statement upon which the point of view or
discussion in the essay is based.
Antithesis: The juxtaposition of sharply contrasting ideas in balanced or parallel words or
phrases.
Litote: Form of understatement in which the negative of the contrary is used to achieve
emphasis and intensity.
For example, "She is not a bad cook." Or "No man ever followed his genius
until it misled him." Thoreau
Propaganda: Information or rumors deliberately spread to help or harm a person, group, or
institution
Didactic: Intended for teaching or to teach a moral lesson
Formal Language: Language that is lofty, dignified, or impersonal
Abstract: Not related to the concrete properties of an object; pertaining to ideas, concepts, or
qualities, as opposed to physical attributes
In medias res: Opening a story in the middle of the action, requiring filling in past details by
exposition or flashback.
Colloquial: Ordinary language; the vernacular.
For example, depending on where in the United States you live, a sandwich is called
a sub, a grinder, or a hero.
Isocolon: Parallel structure in which the parallel elements are similar not only in grammatical
structure, but also in length. For example, "An envious heart makes a treacherous ear"
(Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston).
Aesthetic: Pertaining to the value of art for its own sake or for form
Juxtaposition: Placing of two items side by side to create a certain effect, reveal an attitude, or
accomplish some other purpose
Epigraph: Quote set at the beginning of a literary work or at its divisions to set the tone or
suggest a theme.
Motif: Recurrent device, formula, or situation that often serves as a signal for the appearance of
a character or event
Parallelism: Recurrent syntactical similarity where several parts of a sentence or several
sentences are expressed alike to show that the ideas in the parts or sentences
equal in importance. It also adds balance,rhythm, and clarity to the sentence.
For example, "I have always searched for, but never found the perfect painting for
that wall."
Anaphora: regular repetition of the same word or phrase at the beginning of successive
phrases or clauses.
For example, "We shall fight in the trenches. We shall fight on the oceans. We
shall fight in the sky."
Anadiplosis: Repetition of the last word of one clause at the beginning of the next clause.
For example, "The crime was common, common be the pain." (Alexander Pope)
Appeals to: authority, emotion, logic Rhetorical arguments in which the speaker: either claims to
be an expert or relies on information provided by experts (appeal to authority),
attempts to affect the listener's personal feelings(appeal to emotion), or attempts to
persuade the listener through use of deductive reasoning (appeal to logic).
Imagery: Sensory details in a work; the use of figurative language to evoke a feeling, call to
mind an idea, or describe an object. Imagery involves any or all of the five senses
Euphemism: Substitution of a milder or less direct expression for one that is harsh or blunt.
For example, using "passed away" for "dead."
Voice: The acknowledged or unacknowledged source of words of the story; the speaker, a
"person" telling the story or poem.
Tone: The attitude a literary work takes towards its subject and theme. It reflects the author's
(speaker's or character's) attitude.
Theme: The central or dominant idea or concern of a work; the main idea or meaning
Protagonist: The chief character in a work of literature, the "good guy"
Denotation: The dictionary definition of a word; the direct and specific meaning
Mood: The feeling or ambience resulting from the tone of a piece as well as the writer/narrator's
attitude and point of view. The effect is created through descriptions of feelings or
objects that establish a particular feeling such as gloom, fear, or hope
Realism: The literary practice of attempting to describe life and nature without idealization and
with attention to detail
Prose: The ordinary of form of written language without metrical structure, as distinguished
from poetry or verse
Audience: The person(s) reached by a piece of writing or speech act.
Asyndeton: The practice of omitting conjunctions between words, phrases, or clauses. In a list,
it gives a more extemporaneous effect and suggests the list may be incomplete.
For example, "He was brave, fearless, afraid of nothing."
Deductive: The reasoning process by which a conclusion is drawn from set of premises and
contains no more facts than these premises
Assonance: The repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds, usually in successive or
proximate words.
Alliteration: The repetition of initial consonant sounds or any vowel sounds within a formal
grouping, such as a poetic line or stanza, or in close proximity in prose
Consonance: The repetition of two or more consonants with a change in the intervening vowels,
such as pitter-patter, splish-splash, and click-clack.
Invective: The use of angry and insulting language in satirical writing
Point of view: The view the reader gets of the action and characters in a story
Syntax: The way words are put together to form phrases, clauses, and sentences. It is
sentence structure and how it influences the way a reader perceives a piece of writing.
Begging the question: To sidestep or evade the real problem.
Personification: Treating an abstraction or nonhuman object as if it were a person by giving it
human qualities.
Ambiguity: Use of language in which multiple meanings are possible. Ambiguity can be
unintentional through insufficient focus on the part of the writer; in good writing,
ambiguity is frequently intentional in the form of multiple connotative meanings, or
situations in which either the connotative or the denotative meaning can be valid in a
reading.
Connotation: What is implied by a word. For example, the words sweet, gay, and awesome
have connotations that are quite different from their actual definitions.
Transition words: Words and devices that bring unity and coherence to a piece of writing.
Examples: however, in addition, and on the other hand.