Rhetoric Appeals, Devices, Structures, and Fallacies

Logos

Appeal to logic

Ethos

appeal to a sense of credibility

Mythos

appealing to a sense of belief

Topos

appealing to a sense of theme

Kairos

being able to say the right thing at the right time

Adage

a short traditional saying with a general truth

Allegory

a story or work of art that symbolizes a moral or political meaning

Rhetoric

the techniques that speakers and writers use to get what they want

Pathos

Appeal to emotion

Alliteration

successive words with the same starting sounds

Allusion

an indirect reference to something else

Amplification

building on one noun, verb, or adjective through repetition

Analogy

Comparing two things literally for clarification

Anaphora

the repetition at the start of clauses, phrases, sentences, or paragraphs

anecdote

a short personal story, often for humor

Antanagoge

two clauses or sentences where the first clause sets up a proposition which is refuted by the second

Assonance

Repetition of vowel sounds

Consonance

Repetition of consonant sounds

didactic

a speech or essay whose purpose is to teach

double entendre

a word or phrase with multiple meanings

diction

word choice

hyperbole

exaggeration

understatement

lessening the severity

Hypophora

When a speaker brings up a question just to shortly answer it themselves

Deduction

start generally and become specific

Induction

start specific and become general

The familiar to the unfamiliar

Start with something less relatable, then make it more relatable

The Unfamiliar to Familiar

Start with something less relatable, then make it more relatable

Euphemism

replacing a negative word or phrase with a more positive one

Pyspemism

replacing a positive word or phrase with a more negative one

Chiasmus

When words are in a certain order and then reversed to complete the thought

Idiom

a phrase which literally cannot be understood, but is used commonly

verbal irony

sarcasm

dramatic irony

When the audience knows something, the characters don't

Situational Irony

When a situation has an expected outcome, but the actual outcome is antithetical to expectation

Juxtaposition

putting two things close to one another for the sake of comparing them

Antithesis

the juxtaposition of contrasting ideas

litotes

affirming something by negating its opposite

Metaphor

comparing something without using like or as

Similie

A comparison using "like" or "as"

Metonymy

describing something by using an item associated with that thing

Synecdoche

using a part of something to describe the whole of it

Onomatopoeia

a word which phonetically matches the sound it describes

Oxymoron

two contradicting words

Paradox

self-contradictory statement

Paraprosdokian

a sentence where the end of it recontextualizes everything that came before

parallel structure

when the structure of the speech is repeated somewhere else

Personification

giving a non-human human qualities

chremamorphism

giving a human non-human qualities

rhetorical question

a question posed by a speaker for the audience to answer for themselves

symbolism

anything that represents something else

syllogism

a logical progression connecting multiple ideas

syntax

the structure of a sentence

tautology

saying the same thing twice in two different ways, meaning the same thing

ad hominem

attacking the person rather than the argument

Argument to the people

saying things should be a certain way because "they have always been this way"

Bandwaging

using popularity as a form of convincing

Argument to Authority

keeping the status quo because the one in authority said so

Begging the claim

using your claim as evidence to support your claim

Black and White

When a speaker only allows two outcomes, ignoring nuance

Card Stacking

only presenting the positives of an argument

name calling

presenting only the negatives of an argument, not the positives

Causation, Not Correlation

mistaking two separate facts as being connected by cause and effect

Common Man

The attempt to relate to an audience by being "one of them"

Complex Question

a question with no reasonable way of answering

Dogmatism

When a speaker allows only one possible outcome

False Authority

relying only on one piece of evidence for your argument

Flag-waving

using patriotism or nationalism as an argument

Genetic Fallacy

agreeing or disagreeing with an argument because of where it comes from

Glittering Generalities

making something seem positive through specific diction

Hasty Generalization

forming a conclusion without proper evidence

Moral Equivalence

justifying one's actions by relating them to unrelated actions

No True Scotsman

leveraging identity as a means of persuasion

non sequitur

jumping to a new line of thought without connecting it

Slippery Slope

creating a scenario through hypotheticals disconnected from logic

Strawman

Misrepresenting someone's argument to make it easier to attack