Rhetorical Strategies and Devices

These flashcards cover key rhetorical strategies and devices, offering definitions for each term to assist in understanding their application in literature and speeches.

Ethos

The credibility or ethical appeal of a speaker.

Pathos

The emotional appeal to the audience's values and feelings.

Logos

The logical appeal based on reasoning and facts.

Exemplification

The provision of specific examples to support an assertion.

Enumeration

The listing of categories or details one by one.

Analogy

Making direct comparisons between the subject and similar circumstances.

Asyndeton

The omission of conjunctions between coordinate phrases, clauses, or words.

Cause to Effect

Presents the source that led to a problem.

Effect to Cause

Presents the problem and then what caused it.

Process

Organized in a step-by-step order.

Repetition

The conscious and purposeful replication of words or phrases to make a point.

Anaphora

The repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive phrases or clauses.

Epistrophe

The repetition of a word or set of words at the end of successive sentences or clauses.

Polysyndeton

The repetition of conjunctions in a series of coordinate words, phrases, or clauses.

Anadiplosis

The repetition of the last word of one clause at the beginning of the following clause.

Parallelism

A grammatical structure that gives two or more parts of a sentence a similar form.

Paradox

An assertion opposed to common sense that may contain some truth.

Euphemism

A substitution of an agreeable or non-offensive expression for a harsh one.

Antimetabole

A figure of emphasis where the words in one phrase are repeated in reverse order in the next phrase.

Expletive

A figure of emphasis using a single word or short phrase that interrupts normal speech.

Epizeuxis

The repetition of the same word two or more times over in immediate succession.