Allusion. Anadiplosis

Transcription

1 Use: Allusion To emphasize a particularly important idea the author wants to get across to the audience without taking up a lot of space by associating it with something or someone the audience already knows well. Allusion is a brief reference to someone or something expected to be widely recognized by the audience/reader from history, literature, religion, politics, sports, science, etc. Little to no information is given about the person or object other than its name and the audience is expected to use their background knowledge of the person or object referenced to infer the significance. Anadiplosis 1. To emphasize a particularly important idea the author wants to get across to the audience. 2. To catch the audience s attention and make an idea more memorable. It's because we have a vision, a vision for the future of this country, of this nation, of the world order! - Iron Man You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: victory. Victory at all costs. - Winston Churchill Anadiplosis is repeating the exact same words at the end of a one sentence or clause and the beginning of the next. Other times, you may find an extra filler word (in, if, an, the, etc.), possibly two, in one of the phrases that is not repeated in the other. An example like this with an extra word or two can still be anadiplosis if the intent to emphasize an idea is obvious.

2 Analogy 3. To compare the unfamiliar target object/concept with another idea/concept the audience knows better to help them gain understanding of the issue. 4. To compare a well-accepted, favorable idea with a newer, less established or less favorable idea that the author/speaker wants the audience to accept. For thousands of years we ve been burning, forging, soldering, melting, and heating inert material from the earth s crust. We ve been using pyro-technologies, fire-technologies and we ve refashioned the earth using fire. We ve created steel, glass, cinnabar, cement, synthetics and plastic. The culmination of the fire-technology era is the industrial age, the burning of fossil fuels and nuclear power. - Jeremy Rifkin In San Jose, in the heart of the high-tech world, sits what s known as the Winchester Mystery House. It started out in the late 1880s as a small farmhouse and by the 1920s was transformed into a 160-room, seven-story Victorian mansion with doors and stairways that lead no where, dead-end hallways, and mazes that can leave you lost for hours. The house grew that way -- with no logic or plan -- because the owner just kept adding, adjusting and adding again as needs or desires required; the result is an architectural white elephant. In the world of communications policy, we have our own version of the Mystery House. - Tom Tauke For we have learned from recent experience that when a financial system weakens in one country, prosperity is hurt everywhere. When a new flu infects one human being, all are at risk. When one nation pursues a nuclear weapon, the risk of nuclear attack rises for all nations. When violent extremists operate in one stretch of mountains, people are endangered across an ocean. When innocents in Bosnia and Darfur are slaughtered, that is a stain on our collective conscience. Analogy as used in rhetoric is a practical comparison device of two like concepts. Simile and Metaphor are specialized types of analogies that compare unlike objects. Do not confuse these or count these as analogies for our purposes.

3 Anaphora 5. To emphasize a particularly important idea the author wants to get across to the audience. 6. To catch the audience s attention and make an idea more memorable. We do not give up. We do not quit. We do not allow fear or division to break our spirit. It can be helped by preventing realistically the tragedy of the growing loss through foreclosure of our small homes and our farms. It can be helped by insistence that the Federal, the State, and the local governments act forthwith on the demand that their cost be drastically reduced. It can be helped by the unifying of relief activities which today are often scattered, uneconomical, unequal. - Franklin Delano Roosevelt Something is happening in Memphis; something is happening in our world. - Martin Luther King, Jr. Yesterday, the Japanese government also launched an attack against Malaya. Last night, Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong. Last night, Japanese forces attacked Guam. Last night, Japanese forces attacked the Philippine Islands. Last night, the Japanese attacked Wake Island. And this morning, the Japanese attacked Midway Island - Franklin Delano Roosevelt Anaphora is repeating the exact same words at the beginning of a sentence or clause at least 3 times in its purest sense, but sometimes you will find strong examples that only need to repeat a phrase twice like the 3 rd example above and clearly show the author s intent to emphasize the idea. Other times, like the last example above, you will find an extra word, possibly two, in one of the phrases that is not repeated in the others, but the word is mostly a filler word (in, if, an, the, etc.). These examples can still be anaphora if the intent to emphasize an idea is obvious. Use: Anecdote To emphasize a particularly important idea through developing a more personal connection with the audience. Anecdote is a briefly summarized story given by the writer/speaker that relates to the topic being discussed. An anecdote can be: 1. a personal story of a writer/speaker's real experience. 2. a story of someone else he/she knows or have heard or know about. 3. a hypothetical situation where he/she speculates on what might happen usually starting with "What if" or "Imagine".

4 Antithesis 7. To emphasize a choice the author/speaker wants the audience to make by making the targeted choice look better compared to its extreme opposite. 8. To catch the audience s attention and make the choice memorable. "We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools. - Martin Luther King, Jr. To be or not to be - Shakespeare "I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dryrot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time." - Jack London Either the opponents of slavery will arrest this further spread and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is on a course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates shall press it forward, until it shall become alike lawful in all of the States, old as well as new, North as well as South. - Abraham Lincoln Antithesis is the rhetorical technique of setting up a false choice using two extremes, so that the choice the writer/speaker wants the audience to choose seems better. The choice can be set up (1) using extreme opposites in short phrases like in the 1 st and 2 nd example above OR (2) using longer phrases, each carrying opposite ideas like in the 3 rd and 4 th examples. The key is that it must be setting up a choice between two extremes.

5 Assonance 9. To emphasize a particularly important idea the author wants to get across to the audience. 10. To catch the audience s attention and make an idea more memorable. 11. To control the pace of the reading by creating rhyme and/or rhythm. The hot and monotonous moon shown soft on the mournful frost-bitten dog. - Troy Drayton the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. - Martin Luther King Jr. Soft language issued from their spitless lips as they swished in low circles round and round the field, winding hither and thither through the weeds, dragging their long tails amid the rattling canisters. - James Joyce Assonance is repeating the exact same vowel SOUND, not letter, in close succession at least 3 times in its purest sense. Sometimes you will find strong examples that only need to repeat a SOUND twice like the 2 nd example above, but clearly show the author s intent to emphasize the idea These examples can still be assonance if the intent to emphasize an idea is obvious. Asyndeton 12. To emphasize a particularly important idea the author wants to get across to the audience by giving a list of similar or dissimilar ideas/items in quick succession. 13. To catch the audience s attention and make an idea more memorable. 14. To speed up the pace of the writing by creating lists that rush through items, making them seem more important as a whole than individually. In some ways, he was this town at its best strong, hard-driving, working feverishly, pushing, building, driven by ambitions so big they seemed Texas-boastful. - Mike Royko Some of them were Buddhists. Some of them were Muslim. Some of them were Christians. Some of them were Confucianists; some were atheists. Despite their religious differences, they came together. Some were communists; some were socialists; some were capitalists. - Malcolm X Asyndeton is intentionally omitting extra conjunctions (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so) in a series of items.

6 Colloquialism 15. To emphasize that the person speaking fits in with the regular people in the audience. 16. To catch the audience s attention by using expressions familiar to them. Y all and Fixin to and Might could in the southern U.S. LOL, TTYL, ;), etc. in the texting culture. Pop in the Midwest U.S. referring to soda. Knowing colloquialisms appropriate to your audience makes them feel like you are one of them. As shown above, colloquialisms can apply to any culture or subculture. Many of you have special words that only you or your friends understand and those would be your colloquialisms, but they wouldn t be effective to use unless you were only speaking to your friends because no one would understand them. Consonance 17. To emphasize a particularly important idea the author wants to get across to the audience. 18. To catch the audience s attention and make an idea more memorable. 19. To speed up or slow down the pace of the writing through repetition of easy to say sounds like k or t or slower, more plodding sounds like th or s. My constituency is the desperate, the damned, the disinherited, the disrespected, and the despised. They are restless and seek relief. - Jessie Jackson Stand up for each other; for beautiful, blessed, bountiful America. - John McCain He out-sang his cynics. He out danced his doubters. He out-performed the pessimists. - Rev. Al Sharpton Consonance is repeating the exact same consonant SOUND, not letter, in close succession at least 3 times in its purest sense. Sometimes you will find strong examples that only need to repeat a SOUND twice, but clearly show the author s intent to emphasize the idea. These examples can still be consonance if the intent to emphasize an idea is obvious. Alliteration, repetition of the same consonant SOUND at the beginning of successive words, is a type of consonance.

7 Ellipsis 20. To emphasize a particularly important idea the author wants to get across to the audience. 21. To catch the audience s attention and make an idea more memorable. Examples (words left out are shown in bold and brackets): Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity a greater [teacher]. Hazlitt The streets were deserted, the doors [were] bolted. - Unknown That s camouflage, that s trickery, that s treachery, [that s] window-dressing. - Malcolm X Ellipsis is one of the hardest devices to spot as a reader because your mind naturally fills in the word if it is used well, so you don t even notice as you are reading. The ironic thing is that even though it is hard to spot, ellipsis is mainly used to catch your attention because something sounds off about what you are reading/hearing, but because you fill it in yourself, you never consciously process specifically what wasn t there. Epanalepsis 22. To emphasize a particularly important idea the author wants to get across to the audience. 23. To catch the audience s attention and make an idea more memorable. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope! In times like these, it is helpful to remember that there have always been times like these. - Paul Harvey Epanalepsis is repeating the exact same words at the beginning of a one sentence or clause and the end of that same sentence. Other times, you may find an extra filler word (in, if, an, the, etc.), possibly two, in one of the phrases that is not repeated in the other. An example like the last example above with an extra word or two can still be epanalepsis if the intent to emphasize an idea is obvious.

8 Epistrophe 24. To emphasize a particularly important idea the author wants to get across to the audience. 25. To catch the audience s attention and make an idea more memorable. What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny compared to what lies within us. - Walt Emerson There is no Southern problem. There is no Northern problem. There is only an American problem. - Lyndon Johnson I left campus knowing little about the millions of young people cheated out of educational opportunities here in this country. And I knew nothing about the millions of people living in unspeakable poverty and disease in developing countries. - Bill Gates Epistrophe is repeating the exact same words at the end of a sentence or clause at least 3 times in its purest sense, but sometimes you will find strong examples that only need to repeat a phrase twice like the last example above and clearly show the author s intent to emphasize the idea. Other times, like the last example above, you will find an extra word, possibly two, in one of the phrases that is not repeated in the others, but the word is mostly a filler word (in, if, an, the, etc.). These examples can still be epistrophe if the intent to emphasize an idea is obvious. Farce 26. To emphasize a particularly important idea the author wants to get across to the audience in a severely sarcastic/mocking way. 27. To catch the audience s attention and make an idea more memorable. Democrat Alan Grayson said during the healthcare debate that the Republican s healthcare plan is: Don t get sick, and if you do get sick, die quickly. Many republicans claimed that Democratic healthcare plan was to form death panels to decide who lives and dies. Farce is an extremely sarcastic and mocking attack on your opponent s arguments. It takes reality and exaggerates it to a ridiculous level. In the two examples above from Republicans and Democrats, both statements are utterly ridiculous, but by using terms like death panels and saying a plan is to die quickly, each party takes real bills/issues and makes a mockery of them.

9 Hyperbole 28. To emphasize a particularly important idea the author wants to get across to the audience by significantly exaggerating it. 29. To catch the audience s attention and make an idea more memorable. Cloning is the most radical, daring experiment in our history. - Jeremy Rifkin [America is] shaped by every culture, drawn from every end of the Earth. And also in the human rights revolution, if something isn't done, and done in a hurry, to bring the colored peoples of the world out of their long years of poverty, their long years of hurt and neglect, the whole world is doomed. - Martin Luther King, Jr. Hyperbole is differentiated from understatement and farce in that it is rarely, if ever, used sarcastically. It is used most of the time to exaggerate the outcomes of actions or policies, stressing a positive or negative outcome. Idiom 30. To emphasize that the person speaking fits in with the regular people in the audience. 31. To catch the audience s attention by using expressions familiar to them. Several weeks ago, these efforts bore fruit But I am convinced that in order to move forward, we must say openly to each other the things we hold in our hearts and that too often are said only behind closed doors. Idioms are phrases where the words are put together in such a way that the literal meaning is nonsense, but the phrase itself has come to have a meaning in society. Idioms are one of the most difficult things for foreign language learners in any culture because native speakers use them naturally and you can t interpret the meaning from the words themselves. Knowing idioms appropriate to your audience makes them feel like you are one of them. Idioms are a type of colloquialism, distinguished by the non-literal meaning of the idiomatic phrases.

10 Inverted Syntax 32. To emphasize a particularly important idea the author wants to get across to the audience. 33. To catch the audience s attention and make an idea more memorable. 34. To slow down the pace of the writing by creating unusual word order. Examples (words left out are shown in bold and brackets): to live in peace and security; to get an education and to work with dignity; to love our families, our communities, and our God. These things we share. Yet, alone I must be if I am to succeed. By whom, I know not. - Unknown - Malcolm X Inverted syntax will stand out when you read it. It will sound strange because your mind is used to hearing language in a different way. Sometimes that is why older text sounds strange to you since often times, syntax was different and changed over time. When identifying this device, you need to think about whether the author was doing this to make the inverted idea stick out in the writing/speech. Juxtaposition 35. To emphasize a particularly important idea the author wants to get across to the audience. 36. To catch the audience s attention and make an idea more memorable. "To whom much is given, of him much is required." It is a crisis of confidence. - Clarence Thomas - Jimmy Carter "If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together." We need to go far, quickly. - Al Gore Juxtaposition can occur: (1) using words whose contexts normally make us think of them as contrasting like crisis and confidence or given and required in the 1 st and 2 nd example above OR (2) by the author creating the contrast for us like in the 3 rd example where Gore makes far and quickly seem incompatible by pairing them with alone and together respectively, two directly incompatible opposite words.

11 Oxymoron 1. To emphasize a particularly important idea the author wants to get across to the audience. 2. To catch the audience s attention and make an idea more memorable. act naturally random order original copy found missing alone together criminal justice peace force even odds awful good student teacher definite possibility definite maybe terribly pleased civil war real phony ill health small crowd clearly misunderstood Oxymorons generally act subconsciously on people and are only truly effective if you come up with an original one or are using a cliché one sarcastically with emphasis in the text/speaking. Paradox 37. To emphasize a particularly important idea the author wants to get across to the audience. 38. To catch the audience s attention and make an idea more memorable, forcing them to think at a deeper level to process the statement. If you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only love. - Mother Theresa We make war that we may live in peace. The silence is deafening. exiled in his own land. - Aristotle - Clarence Thomas - Martin Luther King, Jr. Paradoxical phrases will seem to be contradictory to the point where they make no sense on the surface, but the metaphorical meaning behind them is made clear through the context.

12 Parallelism 39. To emphasize a particularly important idea the author wants to get across to the audience. 40. To catch the audience s attention and make an idea more memorable. Ours is a Party of the man who was nominated by those distant conventions and who inspired and restored this nation in its darkest hours: Franklin D. Roosevelt. Ours is a Party of a fighting Democrat who showed us that a common man could be an uncommon leader: Harry S. Truman. Ours is a Party of a brave young President who called the young at heart, regardless of age, to seek a New Frontier of national greatness: John F. Kennedy. - Jimmy Carter Brother: You say there is but one way to worship and serve the Great Spirit. If there is but one religion, why do you white people differ so much about it? Why not all agree, as you can all read the book? Brother: We do not understand these things. We are told that your religion was given to your forefathers and has been handed down -- father to son. We also have a religion, which was given to our forefathers, and has been handed down to us, their children. We worship that way. It teaches us to be thankful for all the favors we receive; to love each other, and to be united. - Seneca Chief Red Jacket Our faith is sure, our resolve is firm, and our union is strong. - George Bush It has talked and talked and talked the words of freedom, but it has failed and failed and failed the works of freedom. - Barry Goldwater Parallelism is the intentional repetition of the same grammatical structure, which may also include a repeated word or phrase, in the same structural position at least 3 times in paragraphs, nearby sentences, or segments of a sentence. The distinguishing factor between parallelism and anaphora/epistrophe is that parallelism will be either longer repeated phrases starting or ending successive paragraphs with large amounts of text in between OR identical grammatical structures with mostly different words.

13 Polysyndeton 41. To emphasize a particularly important idea the author wants to get across to the audience by giving a list of similar or dissimilar ideas/items in quick succession. 42. To catch the audience s attention and make an idea more memorable. 43. To slow down the pace of the writing by creating lists that emphasize each item equally with extra conjunctions. We lived and laughed and loved and left. - James Joyce It will not reduce our need for arms or allies or programs of assistance to others. - John F. Kennedy Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days; nor in the life of this Administration; nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin. - John F. Kennedy Polysyndeton is intentionally using extra conjunctions (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so) in a series of items. It is primarily used to emphasize how much of something is going, how much of something someone has or how different or unified something is. Pun 44. To emphasize a particularly important idea the author wants to get across to the audience by using a word with double meaning to create humor or to emphasize parallel, mutually reinforcing concepts. 45. To catch the audience s attention and make an idea more memorable. Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet is dying and he says to his friends Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find a grave man. (Shakespeare) Did you hear about the guy whose whole left side was cut off? He's all right now. Show me a piano falling down a mineshaft and I'll show you A-flat minor. The butcher backed up into the meat grinder and got a little behind in his work. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. - Martin Luther King, Jr. Puns generally serve to add humor to writing, but as with the last one in the list from Martin Luther King, Jr., they can sometimes be used to create a serious effect where he is speaking to a large group of civil rights protestors and uses the term veterans to have the dual meaning of (1) people who have suffered a long time and (2) people who have been in the military. These dual meanings emphasize the committed role he believes the protesters must continue to take in the movement.

14 Rhetorical Fragment 46. To emphasize a particularly important idea the author wants to get across to the audience by eliminating most words except the ones that carry the most essential meaning. 47. To catch the audience s attention and make an idea more memorable. 48. To slow down the pace of the writing by creating additional pausing with punctuation. He knew it was not enough. Not enough. Look at the American Revolution in That revolution was for what? For land. Why did they want land? Independence. How was it carried out? Bloodshed. - Malcolm X As we walked, I felt myself settling into another version of myself, the self I had been with Jacob. A little younger, a little less responsible. Someone who might, on occasion, do something really stupid for no good reason. - Stephenie Meyer Rhetorical fragment is using a sentence fragment intentionally in writing for emphasis. Often they are short (1 or 2 words), but other times, they may be longer like the last example above. Because the focus is emphasizing a particular important concept, ALL rhetorical fragments are created by cutting out the nonessential words/filler words in a sentence that the reader can effectively infer to keep the thought going. Understatement 49. To emphasize a particularly important idea the author wants to get across to the audience in a sarcastic way or to downplay a particularly important idea that the author thinks might damage his/her argument. 50. To catch the audience s attention and make an idea more memorable. An example would be if a politician was talking about how the rich need to pay a higher percentage of taxes and was trying to counter the opponent s argument that all Americans needed to do their part to pay taxes instead of expecting the rich to pay a higher percentage. The politician may say, You have to think about these people having to figure out how to survive on salaries of two million dollars a year. After the atomic bombing of Japan in World War II, Emperor Hirohito released a statement saying, The war in the Pacific has not necessarily developed in Japan s favor. Speaking against opposition to the war in Iraq, Donald Rumsfeld said, Death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war. Understatement is difficult to come up with and not as common a device outside of public relations in politics. It tends to come up more in highly antagonistic situations or in situations where something has just gone very wrong and people are trying to minimize the damage. Because of this fact, understatement has a significantly high risk of being used unethically.