Sources

Grammar and Composition - Homepage of About Grammar and Composition. Ed. Richard  Nordquist. Web. 09 May 2011. <http://grammar.about.com/>.

Harris, Robert. "A Handbook of Rhetorical Devices." VirtualSalt. 22 Nov. 2010. Web. 09 May

2011. <http://www.virtualsalt.com/rhetoric.htm>.

 

 

Alliteration

The Technical Stuff:
Alliteration is the recurrence of initial consonant sounds.

Example:
Done well, alliteration is a satisfying sensation.

Anaphora

The Technical Stuff:
Anaphora is the repetition of the same word or words at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses, or sentences, commonly in conjunction with climax and with parallelism.

Example:
To think on death it is a misery,/ To think on life it is a vanity;/ To think on the world verily it is,/ To think that here man hath no perfect bliss. --Peacham

Anastrophe

The Technical Stuff:
A rhetorical term for the inversion of conventional word order.

Example:
"Backward ran sentences until reels the mind. . . . Where it all will end, knows God!"

Anthimeria

The Technical Stuff:
A rhetorical term for the use of one part of speech (or word class) for another. In grammatical studies, anthimeria is known as a functional shift or conversion.

Example:
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.
(Hamlet, III.i)

Antithesis

The Technical Stuff:
Antithesis establishes a clear, contrasting relationship between two ideas by joining them together or juxtaposing them, often in parallel structure.

Example:
That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind. --Neil Armstrong

Apostrophe

The Technical Stuff:
Apostrophe interrupts the discussion or discourse and addresses directly a person or personified thing, either present or absent.

Example:
O books who alone are liberal and free, who give to all who ask of you and enfranchise all who serve you faithfully! -- Richard de Bury

Apposition

The Technical Stuff:

Appositive: a noun or noun substitute placed next to (in apposition to) another noun to be described or defined by the appositive.

Example:

Henry Jameson, the boss of the operation, always wore a red baseball cap.

Assonance

The Technical Stuff:
Assonance: similar vowel sounds repeated in successive or proximate words containing different consonants.

Example:
A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid. --Matthew 5:14b
 

Asyndenton

The Technical Stuff:

 Asyndeton consists of omitting conjunctions between words, phrases, or clauses.

Example:
On his return he received medals, honors, treasures, titles, fame.

Bandwagon Appeal

The Technical Stuff:

A fallacy based on the assumption that the opinion of the majority is always valid: everyone believes it, so you should too.

Example:
"The Steak Escape: Americas Favorite Cheesesteak"

Chiasmus

The Technical Stuff:
When the second part of a grammatical construction is balanced or paralleled by the first part, only in reverse order.

Example:
He labors without complaining and without bragging rests.

Climax

The Technical Stuff:
Climax consists of arranging words, clauses, or sentences in the order of increasing importance, weight, or emphasis.

Example:
The concerto was applauded at the house of Baron von Schnooty, it was praised highly at court, it was voted best concerto of the year by the Academy, it was considered by Mozart the highlight of his career, and it has become known today as the best concerto in the world.

Connotation

The Technical Stuff:
The emotional implications and associations that a word may carry, in contrast to its denotative meanings.

Example:

Happy: So why do they call him "The Joker"?

Dopey: I heard he wears make-up.

Happy: Make-up?

Dopey: Yeah, to scare people. You know, war paint.

(William Smillie and Michael Stoyanov in The Dark Knight, 2008)

Consonance

The Technical Stuff:
Broadly, the repetition of consonant sounds; more specifically, the repetition of the final consonant sounds of accented syllables or important words.

Example:
T was later when the summer went
Than when the cricket came,
And yet we knew that gentle clock
Meant naught but going home.

’T was sooner when the cricket went
Than when the winter came,
Yet that pathetic pendulum
Keeps esoteric time.
(Emily Dickinson, "’T was later when the summer went")

Context

The Technical Stuff:
The words and sentences that surround any part of a discourse and that help to determine its meaning.

Example:

"For me context is the key--from that comes the understanding of everything."

Deductive Reasoning

The Technical Stuff:
A method of reasoning from the general to the specific.

Example:
Everything made of copper conducts electricity. (Premise)
This wire is made of copper. (Premise)
This wire will conduct electricity. (Conclusion)

Diction

The Technical Stuff:
Choice and use of words in speech or writing.

Example:
"Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still."
(T.S. Eliot, "Burnt Norton")

Enthymeme

The Technical Stuff:
Enthymeme is an informally-stated syllogism which omits either one of the premises or the conclusion. The omitted part must be clearly understood by the reader. The usual form of this logical shorthand omits the major premise.

Example:

"Mark'd ye his words? He would not take the crown. Therefore 'tis certain he was not ambitious."
(Mark Antony speaking of Julius Caesar in William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar III.ii) 

Ethos

The Technical Stuff:
In classical rhetoric, a persuasive appeal (one of the three artistic proofs) based on the character or projected character of the speaker or writer.

Example:

Epanalepsis

The Technical Stuff:
Epanalepsis repeats the beginning word of a clause or sentence at the end.

Example:

"Next time there won't be a next time."
(Phil Leotardo in The Sopranos)

Epistrophe

The Technical Stuff:
Epistrophe (also called antistrophe) forms the counterpart to anaphora, because the repetition of the same word or words comes at the end of successive phrases, clauses, or sentences.

Example:

 

Euphemism

The Technical Stuff:
The substitution of an inoffensive term (such as "passed away") for one considered offensively explicit ("died"). 


Example:
Paul Kersey: You've got a prime figure. You really have, you know.
Joanna Kersey: That's a euphemism for fat.
(Death Wish, 1974)

Hyperbole

The Technical Stuff:
Hyperbole, the counterpart of understatement, deliberately exaggerates conditions for emphasis or effect.

Example: 

 

Irony

The Technical Stuff:
The use of words to convey the opposite of their literal meaning; a statement or situation where the meaning is contradicted by the appearance or presentation of the idea.


Example: 

 

Logos

The Technical Stuff:
In classical rhetoric, the means of persuasion by demonstration of logical proof, real or apparent.

Example: 

 

Metaphor

The Technical Stuff:

Metaphor compares two different things by speaking of one in terms of the other. Unlike a simile or analogy, metaphor asserts that one thing is another thing, not just that one is like another. 

Example:

Lenny: Hey, maybe there is no cabin. Maybe it's one of them metaphorical things.
Carl: Oh yeah, yeah. Like maybe the cabin is the place inside each of us, created by our goodwill and teamwork.
Lenny: Nah, they said there would be sandwiches.
(The Simpsons)

Metonymy

The Technical Stuff:
Metonymy is another form of metaphor, very similar to synecdoche (and, in fact, some rhetoricians do not distinguish between the two), in which the thing chosen for the metaphorical image is closely associated with (but not an actual part of) the subject with which it is to be compared. 

Example:

The suits on Wall Street walked off with most of our savings. 

Onomatopoeia

The Technical Stuff:

Onomatopoeia is the use of words whose pronunciation imitates the sound the word describes.

Examples: 

No one talks in these factories. Everyone is too busy. The only sounds are the snip, snip of scissors and the hum of sewing machines.

Oxymoron

The Technical Stuff:
Oxymoron is a paradox reduced to two words, usually in an adjective-noun ("eloquent silence") or adverb-adjective ("inertly strong") relationship, and is used for effect, complexity, emphasis, or wit.

Example: 

Personification

The Technical Stuff:
Personification metaphorically represents an animal or inanimate object as having human attributes--attributes of form, character, feelings, behavior, and so on.

Example: 

"Oreo: Milk’s favorite cookie."
(slogan on a package of Oreo cookies)

Paradox

The Technical Stuff:
A figure of speech in which a statement appears to contradict itself.

Example: 
"War is peace."
"Freedom is slavery."
"Ignorance is strength."
(George Orwell, 1984)

Parenthesis

The Technical Stuff:
The insertion of some verbal unit that interrupts the normal syntactic flow of the sentence

Example:
Every time I try to think of a good rhetorical example, I rack my brains but--you guessed--nothing happens.

 

Pun

The Technical Stuff:

A play on words, sometimes on different senses of the same word and sometimes on the similar sense or sound of different words.

Example:

 Fun Resource:
Pun of the Day

Parallelism

The Technical Stuff:

Parallelism is recurrent syntactical similarity. Several parts of a sentence or several sentences are expressed similarly to show that the ideas in the parts or sentences are equal in importance.

Example: 

"Our transportation crisis will be solved by a bigger plane or a wider road, 

mental illness with a pill, 

poverty with a law, 

slums with a bulldozer, 

urban conflict with a gas, 

racism with a goodwill gesture."

(Philip Slater, The Pursuit of Loneliness)

Polysyndenton

The Technical Stuff:

Polysyndeton is the use of a conjunction between each word, phrase, or clause, and is thus structurally the opposite of asyndeton.

Example: 

They read and studied and wrote and drilled. I laughed and played and talked and flunked. 

Propaganda

The Technical Stuff:
The spreading of information and ideas to advance a cause or discredit an opposing cause.


Example: 

 

Qualifier

The Technical Stuff:
A word or phrase that precedes an adjective or adverb, increasing or decreasing the quality signified by the word it modifies.

Example:
"It's pretty hard to be efficient without being obnoxious."
(Elbert Hubbard)

Rhetorical Question

The Technical Stuff:
A question whose answer is obvious or obviously desired, and usually just a yes or no. It is used for effect, emphasis, or provocation, or for drawing a conclusionary statement from the facts at hand.


Example:

Rhetorical Analysis

The Technical Stuff:
A way of understanding and interpreting texts by examining the rhetorical devices used (composition and persuasion), the context of the text, and the audience, both historical and contemporary.

Rhetoric

The Technical Stuff:
The art or study of using language effectively and persuasively.


Example: 
pretty much any piece of literature or set of words ever.

Similie

The Technical Stuff:
Simile is a  comparison between two different things that resemble each other in at least one way.


Example: 

 

Scheme

The Technical Stuff:
A term in classical rhetoric for any one of the figures of speech: a deviation from conventional word order.


Further:
"Schemes include such devices as alliteration and assonance (that purposefully arrange sounds, as in The Leith police dismisseth us) and antithesis, chiasmus, climax, and anticlimax (that arrange words for effect, as in the cross-over phrasing One for all and all for one)."
(Tom McArthur, The Oxford Companion to the English Language. Oxford Univ. Press, 1992)

Synecdoche

The Technical Stuff:
Synecdoche is a type of metaphor in which the part stands for the whole, the whole for a part, the genus for the species, the species for the genus, the material for the thing made, or in short, any portion, section, or main quality for the whole or the thing itself (or vice versa). 

Example: 
Farmer Jones has two hundred head of cattle and three hired hands.

Syllogism

The Technical Stuff:
A Syllogism is a form of reasoning in which two propositions or premises are stated and a logical conclusion is drawn from them. Each premise has the subject-predicate form, and each shares a common element called the middle term.

Example: 

• Dr. House: Words have set meanings for a reason. If you see an animal like Bill and you try to play fetch, Bill's going to eat you, because Bill's a bear.
  Little Girl: Bill has fur, four legs, and a collar. He's a dog.
  Dr. House: You see, that's what's called a faulty syllogism; just because you call Bill a dog doesn't mean that he is . . . a dog.
  ("Merry Little Christmas, House, M.D.)

Syntax

The Technical Stuff:
In linguistics, the study of the rules that govern the ways in which words combine to form phrases, clauses, and sentences. Syntax is one of the major components of grammar.

Example:
"Syntax and vocabulary are overwhelming constraints--the rules that run us. Language is using us to talk--we think we’re using the language, but language is doing the thinking, we’re its slavish agents."
(Harry Mathews)

Trope

The Technical Stuff:
A trope is a figure of speech using words in nonliteral ways, such as a metaphor.

Example: 
"The new word-that-must-be-used is 'trope,' meaning metaphor, example, literary device, picture--and maybe whatever else the writer wants it to mean.
"The main meaning of 'trope' is 'figure of speech.' . . .
"But as I’ve noted before, the sense has been extended to something vaguer and less effective, like 'theme,' 'motif' or 'image.'
"One interesting point: according to our article archive, 'trope' has appeared 91 times in articles in the past year. A search of NYTimes.com, however, shows a staggering 4,100 uses in the past year--which suggests that blogs and reader comments may be the biggest sources of 'trope' inflation."
(Philip B. Corbett, "More Weary Words." The New York Times, Nov. 10, 2009)

Thesis

The Technical Stuff:
A thesis is a dissertation advancing an original point of view as a result of research, especially as a requirement for an academic degree.

Example: 
"We watch baseball: it's what we have always imagined life should be like. We play softball. It's sloppy--the way life really is."
(from the introduction to Watching Baseball, Playing Softball)

Understatement

The Technical Stuff:
Understatement deliberately expresses an idea as less important than it actually is, either for ironic emphasis or for politeness and tact.

 Example:

Warrant

The Technical Stuff:

The warrant can be expressed by a general statement referring to a rule, principle, and so on. In principle, this general statement will have a hypothetical form ('[if data] then [claim]'). The warrant functions as a bridge between the data and the claim.

Example:

"The connection between the data and the conclusion is created by something called a 'warrant.' One of the important points made by Toulmin is that the warrant is a kind of inference rule, and in particular not a statement of facts."
(Jaap C. Hage, Reasoning With Rules: An Essay on Legal Reasoning. Springer, 1997)

Zeugma

The Technical Stuff:

Zeugma includes several similar rhetorical devices, all involving a grammatically correct linkage (or yoking together) of two or more parts of speech by another part of speech. Thus examples of zeugmatic usage would include one subject with two (or more) verbs, a verb with two (or more) direct objects, two (or more) subjects with one verb, and so forth.

Example: