rhetorical devices and composition

1. rhetorical devices and composition Rhetorical Devices and Composition -- Collected and Organized By Marc Raugust

2. rhetorical devices and composition: intro • Rhetoric … • comes from the Greek word meaning orator or teacher • is language (spoken or written (and other forms)) that is meant to persuade • began in Greece in 500 BCE with the Sophists • followed by Plato and Aristotle, and after them, many others including Cicero and Quintilian

3. rhetorical devices and composition: intro • rhetoric was a foundational subject at the universities of Europe and America • also studied were grammar and dialectics • speaking was stressed then, now written rhetorical skills are important

4. rhetorical devices and composition: antistrophe ANTISTROPHE (epistrophe)‏ the repetition of the same word or phrase at the end of successive clauses. "...and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth." - Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address

5. rhetorical devices and composition: antistrophe "I said you're afraid to bleed. [As] long as the white man sent you to Korea, you bled. He sent you to Germany, you bled. He sent you to the South Pacific to fight the Japanese, you bled. You bleed for white people. But when it comes time to seeing your own churches being bombed and little black girls be[ing] murdered, you haven't got no blood." -- Malcolm X, Message to the Grassroots

6. rhetorical devices and composition: antistrophe "The time for the healing of the wounds has come. The moment to bridge the chasms that divides [sic] us has come." -- Nelson Mandela, Inaugural Address "Now I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country." -- delivered by George C. Scott (from the movie Patton)

7. rhetorical devices and composition: antistrophe "You have the luxury of not knowing what I know -- that Santiago's death, while tragic, probably saved lives, and my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives." Jack Nicholson, from A Few Good Men‏

8. rhetorical devices and composition: anaphora ANAPHORA is the repetition of the same word or words at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses, or sentences "What we need in the United States is not division. What we need in the United States is not hatred. What we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness; but is love and wisdom and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country whether they be white or whether they be black." -- Robert F. Kennedy, Announcing the death of Martin Luther King

9. rhetorical devices and composition: anaphora "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, Pearl Harbor Address "My Republican Party today -- it is not a conservative Party. It is soft on globalism. It is soft on big government. It is soft on the 2nd Amendment. It is soft on life." -- Pat Buchanan, Radio interview with Rush Limbaugh

10. rhetorical devices and composition: anaphora "To raise a happy, healthy, and hopeful child, it takes a family; it takes teachers; it takes clergy; it takes business people; it takes community leaders; it takes those who protect our health and safety. It takes all of us." -- Hillary Clinton, 1996 Democratic National Convention Address Note: Can you spot the alliteration? "The Republicans believe that the wagon train will not make it to the frontier unless some of the old, some of the young, some of the weak are left behind by the side of trail." -- Mario Cuomo, 1984 Democratic National Convention Address

11. rhetorical devices and composition: anaphora “All day long, All day strong” -- Aleve, by Procter and Gamble

12. rhetorical devices and composition: analogy ANALOGY compares two things, which are alike in several respects, for the purpose of explaining or clarifying some unfamiliar or difficult idea or object by showing how the idea or object is similar to some familiar one. "Don't worry about the future; or worry -- but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum." -- Baz Luhrmann, Everybody's Free (to Wear Sunscreen)

13. rhetorical devices and composition: analogy "Our men in uniform are like the college football players. While the struggle is impending, they are observing the rules of training that they may be fit to fight. But when the game has been won, the temptation to break training and make up for the restraints of the past months and years will be a mighty one." -- John D. Rockefeller, Jr., War Campaign Address "Dumb gorgeous people should not be allowed to use literature when competing in the pick-up pool. It's like bald people wearing hats." -- delivered by Matt McGrath (from the movie Broken Hearts Club)

14. rhetorical devices and composition: analogy Lt. Cmdr. Ron Hunter: Do you know what's goin' on here? Petty Officer Vossler: Yes, sir. Hunter: No, I don't think you do. Let me explain it to you. If we launch and we're wrong, what's left of Russia is gonna launch at us. And there will be a nuclear holocaust beyond imagination, so it's all about knowing, Mr. Vossler. We have to know whether or not our order to launch has been recalled or not. The only way we're gonna know is if you fix that radio. You understand me? Vossler: Yes, sir. Hunter: You ever watch Star Trek?

15. rhetorical devices and composition: analogy Vossler: Yeah.... Hunter: Star Trek...you know the USS Enterprise. Alright. You remember when the Klingons were going to blow up the Enterprise. And Captain Kirk calls down to Scotty -- he says "Scotty, I've gotta have more power – Vossler: He needs more warp speed...Yeah. Hunter: Warp speed, exactly. Well I'm Captain Kirk...you're Scotty...I need more power. I'm telling you, if you do not get this radio up a billion people are going to die. Vossler: Aye, Captain. -- delivered by Denzel Washington and Lillo Brancato (from the movie Crimson Tide)

16. rhetorical devices and composition: metaphor 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. Aristotle says in his Rhetoric, "It is metaphor above all else that gives clearness, charm, and distinction to the style." metaphor not only explains by making the abstract or unknown concrete and familiar, but it also enlivens by touching the reader's imagination.

17. rhetorical devices and composition: metaphor Colonel Kurtz: "Are you an assassin?" Captain Willard: "I'm a soldier." Colonel Kurtz: "You're neither. You're an errand boy...sent by grocery clerks...to collect a bill." -- delivered by Marlon Brando and Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now

18. rhetorical devices and composition: metaphor "With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood." -- Martin Luther King, I Have a Dream Note here there are two metaphors which serve as a comparison for two different but related ideas: 1) racial problems = "jangling discords" and 2) racial problems solved through faith = "beautiful symphony of brotherhood“ "At the dawn of spring last year, a single act of terror brought forth the long, cold winter in our hearts. The people of Oklahoma City are mourning still." -- Al Gore, Oklahoma Bombing Memorial Address

19. rhetorical devices and composition: alliteration ALLITERATION is the repetition of initial consonant sounds Do not let such evils overwhelm you as thousands have suffered, and thousands have surmounted; but turn your thoughts with vigor to some other plan of life, and keep always in your mind, that, with due submission to Providence, a man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself. --Samuel Johnson

20. rhetorical devices and composition: alliteration “Let us go forth to lead the land we love.” -- J. F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address “Veni, vidi, vici.” --Julius Caesar

21. rhetorical devices and composition: assonance ASSONANCE similar vowel sounds repeated in successive or proximate words containing different consonants "The gloves didn't fit. If it doesn't fit, you must acquit." -- Johnny Cochran, Closing Arguments from the O.J. Simpson Trial "Let's go kick the tires and light fires big daddy." -- delivered by Harry Connick Jr. in the movie Independence Day

22. rhetorical devices and composition: assonance "Our flag is red, white, and blue -- but our national is rainbow. Red, yellow, brown, black, and white, we're all precious in God's sight." -- Jesse Jackson, 1984 Democratic National Convention Address "I feel the need, the need for speed." -- Tom Cruise and Anthony Edwards in the film, Top Gun

23. rhetorical devices and composition HYPERBOLE Deliberate exaggerations for emphasis or effect. “There did not seem to be brains enough in the entire nursery, so to speak, to bait a fishhook with.” -- Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court “People moved slowly then. There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County.” -- Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

24. rhetorical devices and composition

25. rhetorical devices and composition LITOTES (Meiosis)‏ form of understatement, is generated by denying the opposite or contrary of the word which otherwise would be used War is not healthy for children and other living things. One nuclear bomb can ruin your whole day. It isn't very serious. I have this tiny little tumor on the brain. -- J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

26. rhetorical devices and composition: appeals MODES OF PERSUASION (Appeals)‏ LOGOS- appeal to logic PATHOS- appeal to emotion ETHOS- appeal to ethics LOGOS "In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: 1) Collection of the facts to determine whether injustices are alive. 2) Negotiation. 3) Self-purification and 4) Direct action. We have gone through all of these steps in Birmingham. There can be no gainsaying of the fact that racial injustice engulfs this community. Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of police brutality is known in every section of this country.

27. rhetorical devices and composition: logos Its unjust treatment of Negroes in the courts is a notorious reality. There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than any city in this nation. These are the hard, brutal and unbelievable facts. On the basis of these conditions, Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers. But the political leaders consistently refused to engage in good faith negotiation.“ -- Martin Luther King, Jr. Letter From Birmingham Jail

28. rhetorical devices and composition: pathos PATHOS “I guess it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, 'Wait.' 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, brutalize and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity; 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; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised

29. rhetorical devices and composition: pathos on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see the depressing clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little mental sky, and see her begin to distort her little personality by unconsciously developing a bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son asking in agonizing pathos: 'Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?'; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading 'white' and 'colored'; when your first name becomes 'nigger,' your middle name becomes 'boy' (however old you are) and your last name becomes 'John,' and your wife and mother are never given the respected title 'Mrs.';

30. rhetorical devices and composition: pathos when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tip-toe stance never quite knowing what to expect next, and plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of 'nobodiness'; then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait." -- MLK Jr. Letter From Birmingham Jail

31. rhetorical devices and composition: pathos PATHOS

32. rhetorical devices and composition: ethos ETHOS "Several months ago our local affiliate here in Birmingham invited us to be on call to engage in a nonviolent direct action program if such were deemed necessary. We readily consented and when the hour came we lived up to our promises. So I am here, along with several members of my staff, because I have basic organizational ties here. Beyond this, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the eighth century prophets left their little villages and carried their "thus saith the Lord" far beyond the boundaries of their home towns; and just as the Apostle Paul left his little village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to practically every hamlet and city of the Graeco-Roman world, I too am compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my particular home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid." -- MLK, Jr. Letter From Birmingham Jail

33. rhetorical devices and composition: ethos ETHOS

34. rhetorical devices and composition PROCATALEPSIS anticipating an objection and answering it Men of cold fancies and philosophical dispositions object to this kind of poetry, [saying] that it has not probability enough to affect the imagination. But to this it may be answered that we are sure, in general, there are many intellectual beings in the world besides ourselves . . . who are subject to different laws and economies from those of mankind . . . . --Joseph Addison You may think programming difficult to understand, but if you bear with me I will show you how to break the discipline into steps.

35. rhetorical devices and composition PARALELLISM 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 “For the end of a theoretical science is truth, but the end of a practical science is performance.” --Aristotle "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty." -- John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address

36. rhetorical devices and composition "We have petitioned and our petitions have been scorned. We have entreated and our entreaties have been disregarded. We have begged and they have mocked when our calamity came. We beg no longer. We entreat no more. We petition no more. We defy them." -- William Jennings Bryan "I've tried to offer leadership to the Democratic Party and the Nation. If, in my high moments, I have done some good, offered some service, shed some light, healed some wounds, rekindled some hope, or stirred someone from apathy and indifference, or in any way along the way helped somebody, then this campaign has not been in vain." -- Jesse Jackson, 1984 Democratic National Convention Address

37. rhetorical devices and composition APOSTROPHE a sudden turn from the general audience to address a specific group or person or personified abstraction absent or present “For Brutus, as you know, was Caesar's angel.Judge, O you gods, how dearly Caesar loved him.” -- Shakespeare, Julius Caesar “O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!Thou art the ruins of the noblest manThat ever lived in the tide of times.”—Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

38. rhetorical devices and composition ANECDOTE a brief story narrating an amusing or interesting incident taken from one’s (or another’s) actual experience. Surgical PrecisionOne day, a witness in Judge Edward Ellenborough's courtroom was asked to identify himself before the court. "I employ myself as a surgeon," he pompously began. "But," Ellenborough interjected, "does anyone else employ you as a surgeon?“ --Ellenborough, Edward Law, First Baron (1750-1818) British jurist and lawyer, Lord Chief Justice (1802-18)

39. rhetorical devices and composition RHETORICAL QUESTION (erotesis) answer is obvious or obviously desired, and usually just a yes or no “We shrink from change; yet is there anything that can come into being without it? What does Nature hold dearer, or more proper to herself? Could you have a hot bath unless the firewood underwent some change? Could you be nourished if the food suffered no change? Do you not see, then, that change in yourself is of the same order, and no less necessary to Nature?” --Marcus Aurelius “Why are you so stupid?” -- Raugust (to self)‏

40. rhetorical devices and composition REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM reduce to the absurd; a type of logical argument where one assumes a claim for the sake of argument, arrives at an absurd result, and then concludes that the original assumption must have been wrong, since it led to this absurd result Mother — Why did you start smoking? Son — All my friends were doing it. Mother — You're saying that if all your friends jumped off a cliff, you would do that too?

41. rhetorical devices and composition Another example: A — I don't think the police should arrest teenagers for soft drug possession. B — So, you are basically arguing the police should not enforce the law and we should live in a society of violent chaos.

42. rhetorical devices and composition SLIPPERY SLOPE an argument for the likelihood of one thing happening given another; it means arguing that one thing will start a series of events that will lead necessarily to an undesirable conclusion "if we allow embryonic stem cell research, which sacrifices early-stage embryos, the next thing will be that infanticide and euthanasia of the terminally ill will be permitted so that we can use their body parts for research or cures.  If you don't hold all life to be sacred, then no life will be held to be sacred."

43. rhetorical devices and composition AD HOMINEM attacking the arguer, not the argument ‏ "If they don't have the guts to come up here in front of you and say, 'I don't want to represent you, I want to represent those special interests, the unions, the trial lawyers ... if they don't have the guts, I call them girlie men." -- Arnold Schwarzenegger, referring to members of the 2004 California Legislature

44. rhetorical devices and composition Works Cited http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/bb/history.html http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Rhetoric_and_Composition/Argument http://lsb.scu.edu/~emcquarrie/rhetjcr.htm http://www.uky.edu/AS/Classics/rhetoric.html#6 http://www.virtualsalt.com/rhetoric.htm http://www.galilean-library.org/int21.html the end

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