Rhetorical Analysis: Components, Appeals, Tropes, and Schemes

Vocabulary practice flashcards defining core rhetorical components (SOAPSTone), persuasive appeals (Ethos, Pathos, Logos), rhetorical tropes, and rhetorical schemes.

Speaker

The voice or author behind the text, including not just the author's name, but their background, credentials, perspective, biases, and persona that influence how they shape the message.

Occasion

The time, place, and immediate or larger context that prompted the writing or speech, including the historical events or societal pressures surrounding the piece.

Audience

The specific group of people the piece is meant for, taking into account their beliefs, values, and age.

Purpose

The author’s reason for writing the text, specifically what the author wants the audience to think, feel, or do.

Subject

The general topic, content, or main idea of the piece.

Tone

The author's attitude toward the subject, shown through word choice (diction) and style.

Ethos

An appeal to the speaker or writer's ethics, authority, and trustworthiness that answers why the audience should believe the person delivering the message.

Pathos

An appeal to the audience's emotions, values, and beliefs that aims to make the audience feel sympathy, anger, joy, or fear to prompt action.

Logos

An appeal to the audience's sense of reason or logic that relies on data, facts, and structured arguments.

Tropes

Rhetorical devices that use an artful variation from the typical or expected way a word or idea is expressed; the figurative use of a word that focuses on the significance of word choice (diction).

Allusion

A short reference to a familiar person, place, thing, or event.

Apostrophe

An imagery word used to create and enhance meaning by addressing a person in a speech or composition who is not present.

Metaphor

An imagery word used to create and enhance meaning through a comparison of two unlike things without using "like" or "as."

Simile

An imagery word used to create and enhance meaning through a comparison of two unlike things using "like" or "as."

Personification

An imagery word used to create and enhance meaning by giving inanimate objects human characteristics.

Alliteration

The repetition of the same sound or letter at the beginning of several words in a sequence.

Onomatopoeia

The intentional use of words that sound like their meaning.

Hyperbole

A gross exaggeration used to create or enhance meaning, make an effect, or highlight something of importance.

Oxymoron

The intentional use of an apparent contradiction.

Rhetorical Question

The purposeful inclusion of a question intended not to be answered, but to evoke deep thought.

Schemes

Rhetorical devices that use an artful variation from the typical arrangement of words in a sentence, focusing on word arrangement and sentence structure (syntax).

Parallel Structure/Parallelism

A list of successive words or phrases with the same or very similar grammatical structure.

Juxtaposition

The placing of two things closely together to emphasize the comparisons or contrasts.

Asyndeton

The purposeful omission of words by which the meaning is still clear because of the context.

Polysyndeton

A literary technique that uses conjunctions in repeated succession.

Anadiplosis

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

Anaphora

The repetition of the same word or words at the beginning of successive phrases or sentences.

Chiasmus

A scheme that occurs when the first clause or phrase is reversed in the second, sometimes repeating the same words.