Rhetorical Devices and Terminology

• SPACE CAT

  • SPACE for introduction, CAT for effective commentary in rhetorical analysis

  • Speaker - who wrote this, what do we know about them, does this text have a particular meaning because of WHO wrote/said it?

  • Purpose - what is the speaker hoping to accomplish by putting this out into the world?; to inform, to persuade, to inspire, to entertain.

  • Audience - who was the actual audience of this text, and was that the intended audience? what did the speaker assume about their audience? how does that impact what they say and how they say it?

  • Context - what was going on in the world/culture when this text was produced? what were the biggest issues that the speaker might be directly or indirectly addressing? how would this same text be received differently by a different audience in or in a different time?

  • Exigence - why “NOW” for the speaker? what was the spark or catalyst that moved the speaker to act? Note: context is “happening” all the time,  but usually a localized event/series of events serves as the exigence. 

  • rhetorical Choices; function/significance

  • persuasive Appeals; how it impacts audience (ethos, pathos, logos, kairos)

  • Tone, Task, Tie to thesis; how it helps author/audience

• DIDLS

  • Style & tone

  • Diction - author’s word choice; helps create meaning (especially denotation and connotation); isolated words/phrases

  • Imagery - use of figurative language to appeal to senses; helps convey tone & style

  • Details - facts that give life to characters, settings, and situations; literal

  • Language - entire body of words in a text

  • Syntax - sentence structure and craft to create meaning

• AEC

  • Assertion, Evidence, Commentary; pattern for body paragraphs in argumentative essays

• Accumulation

  • a list of words or ideas which embody similar abstract/physical qualities or meanings; the words/ideas are listed together to build meaning because of their shared quality

  • ex: itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny yellow polka-dot bikini

• Allegory

  • the rhetorical strategy of extending a metaphor through an entire narrative so that objects, persons, and actions in the text are equated with meanings that lie outside the text

  • ex: Aesop's Fables

• Alliteration

  • repetition of the same sound at the beginning of successive words; effect: to increase memory retention, add emphasis, or create rhythm

• Anaphora

  • Repetition of a word/phrase at the start of successive lines

• Allusion

  • a brief, usually indirect reference to a person, place, or literary work - real or fictional

  • ex: chocolate was her Achilles' heel

• Analogy

  • a comparison between ideas or things that are quite different from one another; its goal is to explain/give meaning to a more complex idea or thing by comparing it to something familiar

  • ex: atom's structure is like Solar System, nucleus is the Sun, electrons are planets revolving

• Anecdote

  • a short account/narrative of an interesting/amusing incident, often intended to illustrate/support some point

• Antithesis

  • rhetorical term for the juxtaposition of contrasting ideas in balanced phrases or clauses

  • ex: "you're easy on the eyes and hard on the heart"

• Aristotelian triangle

  • how the speaker, audience, and topic connect

• Asyndeton

  • a technique in which conjunctions are omitted between a series of words, phrases, or clauses

  • ex: "are all their conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils, shrunk to this little measure?"

• Audience

  • listener, viewer, reader

• Apostrophe

  • when a speaker directly addresses someone or something that isn't present

  • ex: Macbeth talking to his dagger, Romeo talking to death

• Antonomasia

  • a kind of metonymy in which an epithet or phrase takes the place of a proper name

  • ex: "The Bard" to mean Shakespeare

• Appositive

  • a noun or noun phrase that follows, defines, and provides information about another noun or noun phrase

  • ex: my cat, Nala

• Chiasmus

  • a rhetorical term in which words, grammatical constructions, or concepts are repeated in reverse order and in the same form or a modified form

  • ex: "Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate" -JFK

• Connotation

  • the use of a word to suggest a different association than its literal meaning

• Dependent clause

  • aka subordinate clause, a long phrase that has become disconnected from the main clause

• Diction

  • author’s word choice; helps create meaning (especially denotation and connotation); isolated words/phrases

  • ex: metaphors, similes, personification, hyperbole

• Ethos

  • the rhetoric that gives an author/speaker credibility as a reputable source of information

• Epizeuxis

  • a rhetorical device in which the word(s) or phrase(s) are repeated in quick succession for emphasis

  • ex: alone, alone, all, all, alone

• Evidence

  • (comes from you): facts, statistics, examples, expert statements, text/media, observation, personal experience/anecdote, analogy, current event, history

• Exemplification

  • a pattern of essay development that uses specific instances/examples to clarify a point, to add interest, or to persuade

  • ex: we have a close family; we have weekly Sunday dinner

• Exigence

  • an issue, problem, or situation that causes or prompts someone to write or speak

  • ex: Gettysburg Address

• Epistrophe

  • the repetition of the same word/words at the end of successive phrases, clauses, or sentences

  • ex: gov of the people, by the people, for the people

• Fallacy

  • a failure in reasoning that renders an argument invalid

  • ex: people died of cancer before cigarettes; smoking doesn't cause cancer

• Figurative language

  • the use of words in a way that deviates from the conventional order and meaning in order to convey a complicated meaning, colorful writing, clarity, or evocative comparison

• Hyperbole

  • exaggeration and overstatement for emphasis and effect

• Hypophora

  • a figure of speech in which the speaker poses a rhetorical question and then answers the question

• Imagery

  • use of figurative language to appeal to senses; helps convey tone & style

• Independent clause

  • a group of words that could be a complete sentence all by itself

• Juxtaposition

  • a literary technique in which 2 or more ideas, places, characters and their actions are placed side by side for the purpose of developing comparisons and contrasts

  • ex: "man can abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life"

• Kairos

  • the rhetorically correct time to say or do a particular thing depending on the context

  • ex: Gettysburg Address gave nation motivation

• Language

  • entire body of words in a text

• Litotes

  • an ironic understatement that expresses a positive sentence using its negative form in order to emphasize an idea/situation, rather than minimizing its importance

  • ex: you won't be sorry

• Logos

  • an appeal to logic/way of persuading with reason, using facts and figures

• Metaphor

  • compares one thing to another; X is Y

• Metonymy

  • when a word is associated with/related to something is used to refer to that thing

  • ex: "crown" for "king/queen/monarchy"

• Occasion

  • time and place

• Oxymoron

  • contradiction; two contradictory terms or ideas used together

  • ex: "parting is such sweet sorrow" "jumbo shrimp"

• Parallelism

  • a device in which grammatically, structurally, aurally, or semantically similar components are used throughout.a sentence or passage to create balance

  • ex: "I've done some good, offered some service, shed some light, healed some wounds..."

• Pathos

  • an appeal to emotion; a way of convincing the audience of an argument by creating an emotional response

• Pleonasm

  • the use of redundant words within a phrase to emphasize an idea

  • ex: burning fire

• Persona

  • "mask" the face, role, or character that a speaker shows to his or her audience

• Personification

  • the attribution of human characteristics to something nonhuman

  • ex: leaves danced across the yard

• Polysyndeton

  • a technique in which conjunctions (and, but, or) are used repeatedly in quick succession, often with no commas, even when the conjunctions could be removed

  • ex: we have ships and men and money and stores

• Pun

  • a play on words in which a homophone is repeated but used in a different sense

  • ex: "You have dancing shoes / With nimble soles. I have a soul of lead." -Romeo

• Purpose

  • speaker’s goal

• Repetition

  • the repeating of a word or phrase

• Rhetoric

  • the art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing; “the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion” -Aristotle

• Rhetorical question

  • a written question which expects no answer; used to make points, persuade, and get audience thinking

• Simile

  • compare two things using the words “like,” “as,” or “than”

• Spatial order

  • when you explain or describe objects as they are arranged around you in your space

• Strong verbs

  • verbs in which the vowel in the stem is changed to indicate tenses

  • ex: ring → rang → rung

• Structure

  • a theory of text organization which provides a framework for an analysis of text

• Symbolism

  • the use of words or images to symbolize specific concepts, people, objects, or events

• Syntax

  • sentence structure and craft to create meaning

  • ex: parallelism, juxtaposition, antithesis, and compound, complex, periodic, cumulative, and imperative sentences

• Synesthesia

  • a device where one sense is described in terms of another (often as a simile)

  • ex: "Skittles: Taste the Rainbow"

• Thesis

  • a defensible claim that  an be argued, takes a clear position on the issues/examines the author’s rhetorical choices

  • essay contains information to support thesis; it’s the main idea of the essay

  • 1 sentence, 2-3 subpoints/subclaims/assertions (x, y, z,), located in the introduction

• Transition

  • a word or phrase that shows the relationship between paragraphs or sections of a text or speech

• Tone

  • author’s attitude toward the subject; found through diction

• Understatement

  • an expression of lesser strength than what the speaker or writer actually means or than what is normally expected

• Zeugma

  • a figure of speech in which a verb or adjective applies to more than one noun, and blends together different ideas

  • ex: Irish farmers grew potatoes, barley, and bored.

MLA 8

• Paper format

  • Header

  • 12pt Times New Roman double spaced

• Works cited page format

  • Last name, first name middle initial. “Title of article/chapter.” Title of Journal/magazine/novel, other contributors, version, number, publisher, publication date, location.

  • ex: Ruggieri, Colleen A. “The Great Gatsby and the Cacophony of the American Dream.” The English Journal, vol. 97, no. 3, 1 Jan. 2008, pp. 109-110, JSTOR, doi: 10.2307.

• In-text citations

  • (last name pg numbers)

  • ex: (Ruggieri 109-110)

• Citing texts using MLA 8

• Footnote/endnote

  • the use of superscript numbers in the document that correspond to supplemental information

Fallacies

• Ad hominem

  • focuses our attention on people rather than evidence; the arguer attacks his/her opponent instead of the opponent’s argument

  • ex: “Andrea Dworkin has written several books arguing that the advertisement industry is harmful to women. But Dworkin is just ugly and bitter, so why should we listen to her?”

• Ad populum (bandwagon)

  • “to the people” fallacy; arguer takes advantage of the desire most people have to be liked and to fit in with others and uses that desire to try to get the audience to accept his/her argument

  • ex: in a court of law, the jury vote by majority; therefore, you should always agree with the other jury members because they understand justice and are always right

• Circular reasoning

  • either relies on a premise that says the same things as the conclusion, or simply ignore an important (but questionable) assumption that the argument rests on

  • ex: my plan to improve our community is to create change by doing things differently.

• Straw man

  • the arguer sets up a weak version of the opponent’s position and tries to score points by knocking it down

  • ex: after Will said that we should put more money into education, Warren responded by saying that he was surprised that Will hates our country so much that he wants to leave it defenseless by cutting military spending.

• False dichotomy (either/or fallacy)

  • the arguer sets up the situation so that it looks like there are only two choices, then eliminates once choice so it seems like there’s only one option—the one the arguer wanted the audience to pick, but there are really many different options

  • ex: “Caldwell Hall is in bad shape. Either we tear it down and put up a new building, or we continue to risk students’ safety. Obviously, we shouldn’t risk anyone’s safety, so we must tear the building down”

• Faulty analogy

  • many arguments rely on analogies between two or more objects, ideas, or situations; if the two things that are being compared aren’t really alike in the relevant respects, the analogy is weak

  • ex: “guns are like hammers—they’re both tools with metal parts that could be used to kill someone. And yet it would be ridiculous to restrict the purchase of hammers.”

• Hasty generalization

  • making assumptions about a whole group or range of cases based on a sample that is inadequate (usually because it’s too small); stereotypes about people

  • ex: “my roommate said her philosophy class was hard, and the one I’m in is hard, too. All philosophy classes must be hard!” “librarians are shy and smart” “wealthy people are snobs”

• Slippery slope

  • the arguer claims that a sort of chain reaction, usually ending in some dire consequence, will take place, but there’s really not enough evidence for that assumption

  • ex: “animal experimentation reduces our respect for life. If we don’t respect life, we are likely to be more and more tolerant of violent acts like war and murder. Soon our society will become a battlefield in which everyone constantly fears for their lives. It will be the end of civilization. To prevent this terrible consequence, we should make animal experimentation illegal right now.”

• Post hoc ergo propter hoc

  • “after this, therefore, because of this” fallacy is the assumption that because B comes after A, A caused B. but sometimes, two events that seem related aren’t really related as cause and effect; correlation isn’t the same as causation

  • ex: “President Jones raised taxes, and then the rate of violent crime went up. Jones is responsible for the rise in crime.”

• Red herring

  • partway through an argument, the arguer goes off on a tangent, raising a side issue that distracts the audience from what’s really at stake

  • ex: “grading this exam on a curve would be the fairest thing to do. After all, classes go more smoothly when the students and the professor are getting along well.”

Rhetorical Analysis

• Accumulation

  • a list of words or ideas which embody similar abstract/physical qualities or meanings; the words/ideas are listed together to build meaning because of their shared quality

  • ex: itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny yellow polka-dot bikini

• Allegory

  • the rhetorical strategy of extending a metaphor through an entire narrative so that objects, persons, and actions in the text are equated with meanings that lie outside the text

  • ex: Aesop's Fables

• Allusion

  • a brief, usually indirect reference to a person, place, or literary work - real or fictional

  • ex: chocolate was her Achilles' heel

• Analogy

  • a comparison between ideas or things that are quite different from one another; its goal is to explain/give meaning to a more complex idea or thing by comparing it to something familiar

  • ex: atom's structure is like Solar System, nucleus is the Sun, electrons are planets revolving

• Apostrophe

  • when a speaker directly addresses someone or something that isn't present

  • ex: Macbeth talking to his dagger, Romeo talking to death

• Chiasmus

  • a rhetorical term in which words, grammatical constructions, or concepts are repeated in reverse order and in the same form or a modified form

  • ex: "Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate" -JFK

• Euphemism

  • an inoffensive expression that is substituted for one that is considered offensive or harsh

  • ex: we put our dog to sleep

• Hyperbole

  • exaggeration and overstatement for emphasis and effect

• Hypophora

  • a figure of speech in which the speaker poses a rhetorical question and then answers the question

• Imagery

  • use of figurative language to appeal to senses; helps convey tone & style

• Juxtaposition

  • a literary technique in which 2 or more ideas, places, characters and their actions are placed side by side for the purpose of developing comparisons and contrasts

  • ex: "man can abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life"

• Metaphor

  • compares one thing to another; X is Y

• Metonymy

  • when a word is associated with/related to something is used to refer to that thing

  • ex: "crown" for "king/queen/monarchy"

• Mood

  • feeling created in the audience by work

• Paradoxical

  • a statement or proposition that seems self-contradictory or absurd but in reality expresses a possible truth

• Personification

  • the attribution of human characteristics to something nonhuman

  • ex: leaves danced across the yard

• Simile

  • compare two things using the words “like,” “as,” or “than”

• Speaker

  • creator

• Symbol

  • anything that hints at something else, usually something abstract, such as an idea or belief

• Syntax *sentence types

  • declarative (statement), exclamatory (exclamation), interrogative (question), imperative (command)

  • simple (1 subject, 1 verb), compound (2 independent clauses), complex (1 independent clause and 1+ dependent clause), compound-complex (2+ independent clauses and 1+ dependent clause)

  • balanced, periodic, loose/cumulative, inverted, split order, interrupting phrase, juxtaposition

• Text structures

  • a theory of text organization which provides a framework for an analysis of text

• Tone

  • author’s attitude toward the subject; found through diction

• Understatement

  • an expression of lesser strength than what the speaker or writer actually means or than what is normally expected

• Universal statement

  • says that a certain property is true of all elements in a set

  • ex: all swans are white

Argument

• 4 types of argument

  • (fact, proposal (should/shouldn’t), evaluation (judgment), definition (meaning))

• 3 occasions of argument

  • forensic (past) - evidence and testimony, analyzes causes and effects of past events

    • ex: court decisions, legal documents

  • epideictic (present) - contemporary values debated in society

    • ex: eulogies, inaugural addresses

  • deliberative (future) - establish policies/laws for future; could be speculative

    • ex: proposals, bills, mandates

• Differences between persuasive and argumentative writing

  • persuasive - relies on opinions and feelings; writer uses his own passion and/or plays off reader emotions to get what he wants; audience agrees with writer because of strong emotional appeals

  • argumentative - arguments rely on logical reasons that are all substantiated by facts, data, expert quotes, and evidence; audience agrees with writer because of strong logical appeals.

• Assertion

  • claim (x, y, z)

• Call to action

  • where you clearly tell the audience a role they can play after they leave your talk; what should the audience do?

• Claim

  • your position in an argument

• Concession

  • speaker/writer acknowledges the validity of an opponent's point

• Conclusion

  • how did you prove claim/thesis? synthesize, show readers how your points fit together

  • why should audience care?

  • what is the big picture? show how your topic is one piece of the whole picture

  • come full circle, return to key images, ideas, analogies

  • what should audience do? call to action

• Counterargument

  • opposing position to assertion

• Evidence, support

  • (comes from you): facts, statistics, examples, expert statements, text/media, observation, personal experience/anecdote, analogy, current event, history

• Opponent

  • naysayer, holds opposing position in argument

• Proponent

  • advocate, one who argues in favor of something

• Qualifier

  • words like “some,” “many,” “few,” “sometimes,” “usually,” etc.

• Qualitative data

  • non-numerical information you can observe and record; often gathered from interviews and focus groups, personal diaries and lab notebooks, maps, photographs, and other printed materials or observations

• Quantitative data

  • data that can be counted or measured in numerical values; height in feet, age in years, weight in pounds

• Refutation/rebuttal

  • logical reasons for rejecting counterargument

• Warrant (commentary)

  • explains why evidence is important, how it proves assertion/thesis

• Passage + answering multiple choice questions identifying parts of argument, type of argument, and type of evidence.

Essay

• Choose between 2 different prompts