Rhetorico Literacy Devices/Techniques (copy)

Alliteration

Alliteration

The repetition of initial consonant sounds in adjacent or neighbouring words.

Anaphora

The repetition for rhetorical effect of a word or phrase at the beginning of a successive clauses/phrases.

Antithesis

The juxtaposition of opposites.

Creating a sense of contrast or contradictory elements.

EG : The fire was hot, but the wind was cold.

Aposiopesis

A sudden breaking off from speech in mid sentence.

Suggesting that great emotion (Pathos) has stopped the speaker from being able to continue, and prompting the audience to feel pathos in turn for the speaker.

Assonance

The repetition of vowel sounds in adjacent or neighbouring words.

Asyndeton

The lack of conjunctions where we would expect them; the opposite of polysyndeton.

This often produces a sense of rapid action, or else that a number of things/actions are very closely linked together, sometimes with a connotation of such urgency or desperation that there is no time to pause for breath order to add smoothing verbal links between the pieces of information being conveyed.

Chiasmus

The inversion, in the second phrase of two parallel expressions (cf. parallelism), of the order followed in the first phrase. The opposite of Synchysis (ABAB).

EG : noun+verb, verb+noun - ABBA

Congeries

Helping up or piling up a great accumulation (list) of nouns or expressions.

In order to create an overwhelming, breathless affect, which we will usually somehow enact the meaning expressed in a passage. usually in coordinated phrases/causes without causes of subordination.

EG : They all praised the unseeing, multi angled, high energy, resourceful, rapid but orderly efforts of the men.

Consonance

The repetition of consonant sounds anywhere within adjacent or neighbouring words.

EG : ‘Same’ and ‘Home’

Empathic Position

The placement of words at the beginning or end of a verse/line or sentence for the sake of emphasis. Because between line end and line beginning there is always a pause, and so words adjacent to the pause tend to stand out.

Enclosing-Order

A pair of words, usually a noun, adjective pair, enclosing another noun: The word order thereby usually enact the words meaning.

Gives the sense that the noun is surrounded by, enveloped by, or engulfed by the other.

Enjambement

The ‘spilling over’ of one poetic line into another, usually enacting the meaning.

Shows how it has reached an extent that it burst beyond what is naturally expected or self-contained, or else some sense of continuity or continuous, unbroken action is being expressed.

Hendiadys

The joining of two words, instead of using one word to qualify the other.

EG : ‘The gold and the bowl’ instead of ‘The golden bow’ ; ‘The power and the glory’

Homoioteleuton

Adjacent to neighbouring words that share the same ending; Effectively a rhyme.

This is more significant when the two words aren’t in grammatical agreement. Therefore, being unexpected.

Hypallage

The transferring of epithet from its natural referent to a less natural referent for rhetorical effect.

This Device usually enacts some kind of unnatural displacement that has occurred.

EG : Forgetfulness and by implication, it’s opposite, mindfulness are located in the arm.

Metaphorically meaning how the displacement of mindfulness from the brain has resulted in the displacement of the arm into the blades.

Hyperbaton

chaotic word order, usually enacting the meaning in a passage.

Something chaotic will be taking place: the author suggest that it had even upset or disturbed Predictable, sensible, reasonable, or natural word order.

Hyperbole

Exaggeration; overstatement: the opposite of meiosis.

Hysteron Proteron

Putting things in reverse chronological order.

Can create an unsettling effect of disordered and/or a natural action through a surprising sense of paradox, and usually suggesting, by association, something unnatural about the action in question.

EG : She ate and cooked her dead goldfish

Juxtaposition

The positioning of two or more words side by side to produce a special, interesting effect.

Oxymoron is a subtype within Antithesis.

Antithesis is a subtype within Juxtaposition.

Litotes

A type of understatement made by denying the opposite of what is being asserted ( a double negative ). This always constitutes a form of understatement ( meiosis ).

By denying the negative but not supplying the extent to which the positive is true, the audience will have to supply that extent, and will naturally assume that it is very extensive.

Thus understatement, Paradoxically, can result in an audience forming a hyperbolic sense of something through it being described too modestly, rather than in direct hyperbolic terms.

Meiosis

A deliberate understatement which paradoxically puts emphasis on a thing’s extent/expansiveness.

The audience is left naturally to assume that an accurate statement of the extent of something would represent it as extremely vast/extensive/expansive.

Metaphor

A figurative, rather than literal, use of word expression: one thing is substituted for another thing with some similar shared characteristics or features, which the author is seeking to emphasise in some way.

Oxymoron

The referring to something using a descriptor that is contradictory to its nature.

Always producing a sense of paradox.

EG : True lies

Paradox

A surprising and apparently contradictory expression that nevertheless has truth in it: A puzzling and counter intuitive idea or expression that proves to be in spite of its own contrariness and seeming unlikeliness.

Intensely thought provoking.

Parallelism

The balanced repetition of words and/or phrases so as to suggest a sense of oddness, regularity, or predictability.

Also called Isocolon, whose three main varieties are: Dicolon, Tricolon, & Tetracolon.

Parechesis

The repetition, or near repetition, of a whole syllable/s in adjacent or neighbouring words.

Pathos

The emotional effect produced by a text.

Pleonasm

A description of something that involves words/expressions that partly overlap in their meanings.

Already implied, un needed descriptors added only for the sake of emphasis.

Polyptoton

The repetition of the same word in several different forms/cases/tenses in adjacent or neighbouring proximity.

This creates a sense of abundance of fullness, which the whole passage being suffused with whatever the word denotes.

Polysyndeton

The use of many conjunctions; the opposite of Asyndeton.

This can create the effect of piling on things/actions ( Congeries ) usually because the author is seeking to emphasise whatever is common to all of these actions.

Present historic

The use of the present tense – even though technically referred to past time – to make the narrative more graphic, immediate, and vivid.

As though the events were unfolding before the audience in real time.

Prolepsis

A flash forward in the narrative; also called foreshadowing.

Rhetorical question

A question which no answer is expected (since the answer is implied).

But which is used to make a statement for dramatic effect; the audience, by answering with their imagination, persuade themselves.

Sibilance

Consonants of the S.

Producing a hissing sound, often expressing loathing or contempt, or alternatively sometimes a sense of excitement, or sinister whispering.

Simile

A direct comparison between one thing and another, signalled by a conjunction.

Soliloquy

The speaking of one’s thoughts allowed when alone, or a monologue.

Superlative

A superlative adjective or adverb used for a special emphasis.

To make a situation seem extreme ( hyperbolic ).

Synchysis

‘Interweaving’: two or more words or phrases or grammatical constructions placed in the same order.

Suggesting a sense of balanced order and predictability; alternatively synthesis can suggest disorder if the expression is hyperbolic compared to Chiasmus (ABBA)

EG : noun+verb, noun+verb (ABAB)

Tautology

A description of something that involves exact synonyms or exact synonymous expressions that overlap entirely, or almost entirely, in their meanings.

Purely for emphasis.

Tricolon

A series of three parallel words or phrases.

Variatio

The use of well chosen synonym (or synonyms) or synonymous expressions within a passage in order to achieve a sense of elegant variation of vocabulary.

Providing a sense of emphasis through repetition, mistakes, but without sounding boringly repetitive, and perhaps also hinting at the existence of further dimensions/features/characteristics belonging to whatever is being described.