Understanding and Using Rhetoric

Flashcards about rhetoric, rhetorical devices, and persuasive techniques.

Rhetoric

The linguistic process of creating an argument; advancing a position.

Ethos

The character or believability of the speaker or writer.

Logos

The logical content of the words used.

Pathos

The emotional appeal of the presentation to the audience.

Logos

The appeal to reason, a well-thought-out and well-structured position. Refers to the logic of reasons and support.

Pathos

The use of emotion in debate or argument; appeals to an audience's feelings and sympathies.

Ethos

The credibility that speaker or writer brings to the subject (can be function of the writer's reputation for honesty and expertise).

Allusion

A reference, explicit or implicit, to something (or someone) in previous literature or history.

Anaphora

The deliberate repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of several successive clauses, phrases, sentences, or paragraphs.

Chiasmus

A figure of speech in which words, grammatical constructions, or concepts are repeated in reverse order, in the same or a modified form.

Diacope

A word or phrase is repeated after a brief interruption.

Double Epithet

Two words of identical or almost identical meaning joined by a conjunction.

Epistrophe

When you end subsequent sentences, clauses or paragraphs with the same word.

Epizeuxis

Repeating a word immediately in the same context.

Litotes

A figure of speech consisting of an understatement in which an idea is expressed by negating its opposite.

Merism

A figure of speech in which something is not named but rather all of its parts are named.

Parallelism

The repetition of the same grammatical pattern within a sentence; you create a parallel construction.

Polyptoton

Repeated use of one word as different parts of speech or in different grammatical forms.

Preterition

A figure of speech by which in pretending to pass over something, a summary mention of it is made, or attention is called to it.

Rhetorical Question

Asking a question when the answer is self-evident, and not meant to be literally answered by the audience.

Tricolon

A figure of speech comprised of three clearly defined parts.

Tricolon Crescens

A figure of speech comprised of three clearly defined parts, listed in ascending order of importance or size.