Rhetorical terms handbook

7/29/2019 Rhetorical terms handbook

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Term: Tropes

Definition: A rhetorical device in which MEANING is altered from

the usual or expected.

Example:

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Term: Schemes

Definition: A rhetorical device in which WORD ORDER is altered

from the usual or expected.

Example:

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Term: Metaphor

Definition: An implied comparison between two unlike things

Example:

“True art is a conduit between body and , soul, between feeling

unabstracted and abstraction unfelt.”

John Gardner, On Moral Fiction

Textual Examples

1. Source: “I Have a Dream”

Example: “This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of

hope to millions of negro slaves who had been seared in the flames

of withering injustice.”

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Term: Simile

Definition: An explicit comparison between two unlike things

signaled by the use of “like” or “as.”

Example:

“Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps

and hornets break through.”

Jonathan Swift, “A Critical Essay Upon Faculties of the Mind”

Textual Examples


Example: “Until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like

a mighty stream”

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Term: Synecdoche

Definition: A whole is represented by naming some of its parts.

Example: “Nice wheels”

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Term: Metonymy

Definition: Reference to something or someone by naming one of

its attributes.

Example: The head of the council is called the “chair.”

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Term: Personification

Definition: Attributing human qualities to an inanimate object.

Example: The clock cast a watchful eye over the class as they wrote

their essay.

Textual Examples

1. Source: “How it Feels to Be Colored Me”

Example: “I do not belong to the sobbing school of Negro-hood who

hold that nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal”

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Term: puns

Definition:

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Term: Onomatopoeia

Definition: The clock cast a watchful eye over the class as they

wrote their essay.

Example: drip, crackle, ban, snarl, pop

Textual Examples

1. Source: “The Death of a Moth”

Example: “Flapped, dropped, flamed, frazzled, fried, ignited,

vanished, clawed, curled, blackened, ceased, disappeared, jerked,

crisped, and burned”.

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Term: Euphemism

Definition: Substituting less pungent words for harsh ones, with

excellent ironic effect.

Example: The schoolmaster corrected the slightest fault with his

birch reminder.

Textual Examples

1. Source: “No Wonder They Call Me A Bitch”

Example: “There was a horrifying rush of cheddar taste, follow ed

immediately by the dull tang of soybean flour- the main ingredient

in Gainesburgers. Next I tried a piece of red extrusion”.

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Term: Hyperbole

Definition: Deliberate exaggeration for emphasis

Example:

“Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand

bayonets.”

Attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte

Textual Examples


Example: “whereas the “meat” chews like play-doh that’s been

sitting out on the rug for a couple of hours”

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Term: Litotes

Definition: A deliberate understatement

Example: “It wasn’t my best moment”

Textual Examples

1. Source: “What it Feels To Be Colored Me”

Example: “I needed bribing to stop, only they didn’t know it. The

colored people gave no dimes. They deplored any joyful tendencies

in me, but I was their Zora nevertheless.

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Term: Rhetorical Question

Definition:

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Term: Irony

Definition:

Allows the writer to take another voice or role that states the

opposite of what is expressed.

Example:

The new swimming pool was an important addition to the campus,

even though library funds had to be cut back. After all, we wouldn’t

want our students to go without the little luxuries they are

accustomed to.”

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Term: Oxymoron

Definition: Two contradictory terms used together

Example: “Parting is such sweet sorrow”

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Example: “I felt deliciously wicked”

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Term: Paradox

Definition:

A statement that appears to be contradictory, but in fact, has some

truth

Example: “He worked hard at being lazy”

Textual Examples


Example: “A lumpy, frightening, bloody, stringy horror is a sign of

high quality-lots of meat”.

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Term: Apostrophe

Definition: Turning away” from the audience to address someone

new—God, heaven, angels, the dead…anyone not present.

Example: “Death, where is thy sting?”

Textual Examples

1. Source: “Letters from Birmingham Jail”

Example: “Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God.”

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Term: Parallelism

Definition: Expresses similar or related ideas in similar grammatical

structures.

Example: “Hell is gaping for them, the Devil is waiting for them…”

Textual Examples


Example: We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the

victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never

be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel,

cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of

the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the negro's basic

mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be

satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and

robbed of their dignity by signs stating: "For Whites Only." We

cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and

a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote.

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Term: Climax

Definition: Writer arranges ideas in order of importance

Example: I spent the day cleaning the house, reading poetry, and

putting my life in order.

Textual Examples

1. Source: “What It Feels to be Colored Me”

Example: The terrible struggle that made me an American out of a

potential slave said "On the line!" The Reconstruction said "Get

set!" and the generation before said "Go!"

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Term: Antithesis

Definition: The juxtaposition of contrasting ideas

Example:

‘Our knowledge separates as well as unites; our orders disintegrate

as well as bind…”

Textual Examples


Example: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day

live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their

skin buy by the content of their character”

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Term: Anaphora

Definition: Repetition of the same word or phrase at the beginning

of successive phrases or clauses.

Example: “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the

landing grounds…”

Textual Examples

1. Source: I Have A Dream

Example:

“one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred

years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the

manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One

hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty inthe midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years

later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society

and finds himself an exile in his own land”

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Term: Epistrophe

Definition: Repetition of the same word or group of words a the

ends of successive clauses.

Example: Shylock: I’ll have my bond! Speak not against my bond! I

have sworn an oath that I will have my bond!

Textual Examples

1. Source: “I have a Dream”

Example: With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray

together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for

freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

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Term: Epanalepsis

Definition: Repeating at the end of a clause the word that occurred

at the beginning.

Example: “Blood hath brought blood, and blows answer’d blows…”

King John

Textual Examples

1. Source: “I Have A Dream”

Example: “Free at Last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free

at last.”

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Term: Alliteration

Definition: Repetition of the same sound at the beginning of

successive words.

Example: “We shall not flag or fail.”

Textual Examples


Example: “Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate”

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Term: Assonance

Definition: Repetition of sounds within words

Example: “The heave’e’yo of stevedores…”

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Term: Anastrophe

Definition: Word order is reversed or rearranged.

Example: “Unseen in the jungle, but present, are tapirs, jaguars,

many species of snake…”

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Term: Paranthesis

Definition: The insertion of words, phrases, or a sentence that is not

syntactically related to the rest of the sentence.

Example: He said it would rain—I could hardly disagree—before the

game was over.”

Textual Examples


Example: I forked one chunk out (by now I was becoming more

callous) and found that while it had no discernible chicken flavor, it

wasn't bad except for its texture-like meat loaf with ground-up

chicken bones.

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Term: Apposition

Definition: The placing next to a noun another noun or phrase that

explains it.

Example: “Pollution, the city’s biggest problem, is an issue.”

Textual Examples


Example: And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will

give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of

justice.

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Term: Asyndenton

Definition: Conjunctions are omitted, producing a fast-paced and

rapid prose.

Example:

“I came, I saw, I conquered.”

Textual Examples


Example: “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…”

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Term: Polysyndenton

Definition: The use of many conjunctions has an opposite effect—

slowing the pace.

Example: “I kept remembering everything—the small steamboat

that we rode on, and how quietly she ran on the moonlight sails,

and how sweet the music was on the water, and what it felt like to

think about girls then.”

Textual Examples

1. Source: “Letters from Birmingham Jail”

Example: “but when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your

mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at

whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and

even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast

majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an

airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society…”

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Rhetorical terms handbook

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