Florian Bay – Beckenham Communicators

Rhetorical devices are as useful in writing or public speaking as they are in life. Also known as persuasive devices, stylistic devices, or just rhetoric, rhetorical devices are techniques or language used to convey a point or convince an audience. Moreover, they’re used by everyone — politicians, businesspeople, and even, you guessed it, your favourite novelists.

You may already know some of them: similes, metaphors, onomatopoeia. Others, maybe not (bdelygmia, we’re talking to you). However, at the end of the day, you’ve probably run into all of these devices some time or another. Perhaps, you’ve even used them yourself. Moreover, if you haven’t, don’t let their fancy Greek names fool you — they’re pretty easy to implement, too. However, before you dive in, let’s identify the different categories of rhetorical devices out there.

Types of Rhetorical Devices

Although there exists plenty of overlap between rhetorical and literary devices, there’s one significant difference between the two. While the latter is employed to express ideas with artistic depth, rhetoric is designed to appeal to one’s sensibilities in four specific ways:

Logos, an appeal to logic;
Pathos, an appeal to emotion;
Ethos, an appeal to ethics; or,
Kairos, an appeal to time.

These categories haven’t changed since the Ancient Greeks first identified them thousands of years ago. This makes sense, however, because the ways we make decisions haven’t changed, either: with our brain, our heart, our morals, or the feeling that we’re running out of time.

So without further ado, here is a list of rhetorical devices designed to tug at those strings, and convince a listener to give you what you want — or a reader to continue reading your book.

List of Rhetorical Devices

Of the hundreds of rhetorical devices currently classified, we’ve compiled 30 of the most useful ones, as well as some examples of these devices in action. Get ready to master the art of rhetoric for yourself, and your audience or readers.

1) Accismus

Accismus is feigning disinterest of something while actually desiring it or the rhetorical refusal of something you want. Like in one of Aesop’s Fables:

Driven by hunger, a fox tried to reach some grapes hanging high on the vine but was unable to, although he leapt with all his strength. As he went away, the fox remarked ‘Oh, you aren’t even ripe yet! I don’t need any sour grapes.’ People who speak disparagingly of things that they cannot attain would do well to apply this story to themselves. “

2) Adnomination

Many rhetorical devices are linguistic tricks that make statements sound more persuasive, like adnomination: the repetition of words with the same root in the same sentence. The difference lies in one sound or letter. A nice euphony can be achieved by using this poetic device.

This rhetoric is sure to somehow work on someone, somewhere, someday.

He is nobody from nowhere and knows nothing

3) Adynaton

Adynata are purposefully hyperbolic metaphors to suggest that something is impossible — like the classic adage when pigs fly.

Moreover, hyperbole, of course, is a rhetorical device in and of itself: an excessively exaggerated statement for effect. Or in simple terms, Adynaton is the simple art of exaggeration to gain more influence.

4) Alliteration

Alliteration is the repetition of consonants across successive, stressed syllables… get it? This most often means repeating consonants at the beginning of multiple words, as opposed to simple consonance, which is the repetition of consonants regardless of which syllable they’re placed on.

Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven makes use of both: “And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain.” “Silken” and “sad” are alliterative, but the consonance continues into “uncertain” and “rustling.” And as a bonus, it contains assonance — the repetition of vowel sounds — across “purple curtain.”

Hover through the fog and filthy air.

Fair is foul, and foul is fair

5) Anacoluthon

“When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.”

The opening sentence of Kafka’s Metamorphosis is famous because it ends somewhere entirely different than where it started. This means it is an anacoluthon, used to challenge a listener or reader to think deeply and question their assumptions.

Anacoluthon is a grammatical interruption or lack of implied sequence within a sentence. That is, beginning a sentence in a way that implies a certain logical resolution, but concluding it differently than the grammar leads one expect. It is an interruption or a verbal lack of symmetry.

6) Anadiplosis

Anadiplosis is the repetition of the word from the end of one sentence to the beginning of the next, and it has been used by everyone from Shakespeare to Yeats to Yoda:

(Source: Lucasfilm Ltd.)

“Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”

7) Anaphora

On the other hand, anaphora is the repetition of words or phrases at the beginning of following sentences. Like in Ginsberg’s Howl — no, not that famous opening line, but instead the ones that follow it:

“Who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz,

who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,

who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war…”

… and so on for the next hundred or so lines. Then, there’s epiphora or epistrophe: the repetition of words at the end of sentences. Moreover, if you combine both, you’ve got a symploce.

Or from Obama;

“People of the world – look at Berlin!

Look at Berlin, where Germans and Americans…

Look at Berlin, where the determination…

Look at Berlin, where the bullets holes…

People of the world – look at Berlin…!

8) Antanagoge

Rhetoric is employed to persuade, convince, or convey — in other words, to get your way. So, it’s only natural that flattery would have its rhetorical device in the form of antanagoge: the inclusion of a compliment and a critique in the same sentence. In simple terms, Antanagoge, to follow a negative point with a positive point.

Examples;

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

I failed my test, but I will pass the next one.

Hurricane Sandy caused a lot of damage, but at least it wasn’t like Katrina.

9) Anthimeria

Anthimeria is the misuse of one word’s part of speech, such as using a noun for a verb. It’s been around for centuries but is frequently used in the modern day, where “Facebooking” and “adulting” have seamlessly become part of the lexicon.

Feel bad? Strike up some music and have a good sing (Verb used as noun)

10) Antiphrasis

Antiphrasis is a sentence or phrase that means the opposite of what it appears to say. Like how the idiom, “Tell me about it” generally means, “Don’t tell me about it — I already know.” It’s also known by a much more common name: irony.

11) Antonomasia

Antonomasia is, essentially, a rhetorical name. Antonomasia is a figure of speech that employs a suitable epithet or appellative to cite a person or thing rather than the original name. Like “Old Blue Eyes,” “The Boss,” or “The Fab Four” — affectionate epithets that take the place of proper names like Frank Sinatra, Bruce Springsteen, or the Beatles.

12) Apophasis

You may have noticed by now that a lot of rhetorical devices are rooted in irony. Apophasis — also known as paralipsis, occupatio, praeteritio, preterition, or parasiopesis — is one of these: bringing up a subject by denying that it should be brought up. This is a classic if oft-maligned political tactic and one frequently utilised by the 45th President of the United States, particularly in his interesting tweets. For example:

“Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me ‘old,’ when I would NEVER call him ‘short and fat?’”

13) Aporia

Aporia is the eloquent expression of the doubt — almost always insincerely. This is a common tool used by businesses to connect with a consumer base, particularly when regarding new inventions that might be met with a doubtful audience.

“To be or not to be; that is the question” or

For instance, take Steve Jobs’ introduction of touchscreen technology:

“Now, how are we gonna communicate this? We don’t wanna carry around a mouse, right? What are we gonna do?”

14) Aposiopesis

Aposiopesis is essentially the rhetorical version of trailing off at the end of your sentence, leaving your listener (or reader) hanging. Like the ending of Mercutio’s famous “Queen Mab” speech in Romeo & Juliet:

“This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs,

That presses them and learns them first to bear,

Making them women of good carriage:

This is she—”

Or in simple: “If you do that again, I will…”

15) Asterismos

Asterismos is simply a phrase beginning with an exclamation. A word that gives weight or draws attention to the words that follow. Like every other sentence in Moby-Dick: “Book! You lie there; the fact is, your books must know your places.” But if no sentence follows, it’s exclamatio: an explicit expression like “My word!” that warrants no follow-up.

16) Asyndeton

If you’ve ever removed conjunctions like “or,” “and,” or “but” from your writing because the sentence flowed better without them, you’ve used asyndeton.

This is a favourite of Cormac McCarthy, like in this passage from Outer Dark: “A parson was labouring over the crest of the hill and coming toward them with one hand raised in blessing, greeting fending flies.” And like most of the enigmatic author’s preferred rhetoric, it is almost intentionally confusing — whether the parson is blessing or greeting or swatting flies is never clarified. Alternatively, he also makes extensive use of polysyndeton: the intentional use of conjunctions to affect sentence flow, like replacing commas with the word “and.”

“The car crashed, exploded, burned, melted”

“In the cave there was a bear, a puppy, a tiger, a moose”

“I came, I saw, I conquered”

“The government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth” A. Lincoln

17) Bdelygmia

Befitting its ugly spelling, bdelygmia or abominatio is a rhetorical insult — the uglier and more elaborate, the better. Like most rhetorical devices, Shakespeare was a big fan. So was Dr. Seuss:

“You’re a foul one, Mr. Grinch; You’re a nasty wasty skunk, Your heart is full of unwashed socks, your soul is full of gunk, Mr. Grinch. The three words that best describe you are as follows, and I quote, ‘Stink, stank, stunk!’”

“I’ve got a staff meeting to go to and so do you, you elitist, Harvard, fascist, missed-the-dean’s-list-two-semesters-in-a-row Yankee jackass”

18) Cacophony

Cacophony is one of the most loosely defined devices out there — simply, it is the use of words that sound bad together. That probably sounds pretty ambiguous, until you remember that Lewis Carroll invented words for his poem “Jabberwocky” just to make it sound harsh and unmelodious:

“’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.”

And it goes hand in hand with euphony — the use of words that sound good together, like this passage from an Emily Dickinson poem:

“Oars divide the Ocean, / Too silver for a seam.”

“There will be a time when you believe everything is finished.

That will be the beginning” Louise L’Amor

19) Chiasmus

A Sentence in which two words in the first half are criss-crossed in the second half. “Despised, if ugly; if she’s fair, betrayed.” This excerpt from Mary Leapor’s Essay on Woman is a great example of chiasmus: the reversal of grammatical structure across two phrases, without repeating any words. So, no, “Fair is foul, and foul is fair” does not count. Rather, that is antimetabole: the repetition of words or phrases in reverse grammatical order to suggest logical truth… even if it’s infallic. Ask not what rhetorical devices can do for you. Ask what you can do for rhetorical devices.

“All for one, and one for all” The Three Musketeers

“Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country” JFK

20) Climax

The turning point in the story. The main character may learn something new, a change takes place, now the conflict can be addresses. Narrative arcs aren’t just for novels. Sentences can have a climax, too — the initial words and clauses build to a peak, saving the most important point for last. We’ve been using climaxes rhetorically since at least Corinthians:

“There are three things that will endure: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.”

It is also a figure of speech in which series of words, phrases or ideas is arranged in an ascending order of importance or emphasis.

“We’ll hear him, we’ll follow him, we’ll die with him”

21) Dysphemism

Dysphemism is a description that is explicitly offensive to its subject, or, perhaps, even its audience. It stands in contrast to a euphemism, which is implicitly offensive or suggestive. Basically, a dysphemism is a word or phrase people use to make something or someone sound negative, bad and unlikeable. Most racial epithets started as the latter, but are recognised today as the former.

To make it more understandable; A euphemism is a figure of speech that makes something bad sound good and a dysphemism is a figure of speech that makes something sound bad or worse that it really is. This is the sample table;

22) Meiosis

Any verbal effort to make something or person less significant than really is, is a form of meiosis. So, if you’ve ever understated something before, that’s meiosis — like the assertion that Britain is “across the pond” from the Americas. The opposite — rhetorical exaggeration — is called auxesis.

“Not bad” for an excellent performance

“I guess they like each other” upon seeing a couple kissing romantically.

“One nuclear bomb can ruin your whole day”

23) Onomatopoeia

Wham! Pow! Crunch! These are all examples of onomatopoeia, a word for a sound that phonetically resembles the sound itself. Which means the finale of the 1966 Batman is the most onomatopoeic film scene of all time.

A pig grunts or goes “Oink! Oink””

A strong wind groans or cries “Whoo, whoo, whoo!”

24) Personification

It’s a lot easier for humans to understand a concept when it’s directly related to them. And since rhetoric is used to convey your point more effectively, there’s naturally a rhetorical device for that: personification, which assigns human characteristics to an abstract concept.

Personification is present in almost all forms of literature, especially mythology, where concepts like war, love, and wisdom are given humanity in the form of gods such as Ares, Venus, Saraswati. But anthropomorphism, which assigns human characteristics to animals, is almost as common, in everything from Peter Rabbit and Winnie-the-Pooh to The Hobbit and Watership Down.

25) Pleonasm

Did you know that being redundant can be rhetorically useful? Certain words are so overused that they’ve lost meaning — darkness, nice, etc. However, “black darkness” or “pleasantly nice” reinvigorate that meaning, even if the phrases are technically redundant. Redundant phrases like these are called pleonasms, and they are persuasively rhetorical.

26) Rhetorical comparisons

Some of the most prevalent rhetorical devices are figures of speech that compare one thing to another. Two of these, you surely know: the simile and the metaphor. But there is a third, hypocatastasis, that is just as common… also, useful.

The distinctions between the three are pretty simple. A simile compares two things explicitly: “You are like a monster.” A metaphor compares them by asserting that they’re the same: “You are a monster.” And with hypocatastasis, the comparison itself is implied: “Monster!”

27) Rhetorical question

You’ve probably heard of a rhetorical question, too: a question asked to make a point rather than to be answered. Technically, this figure of speech is called interrogatio, but there are plenty of other rhetorical devices that take the form of questions.

If you pose a rhetorical question to answer it yourself, that’s anthypophora (or hypophora… they mean the same thing). And if your rhetorical question infers or asks for a broad audience’s opinion (“Friends, Romans, countrymen […] Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?”), that’s anacoenosis — though it generally doesn’t warrant an answer, either. Some sample questions;

“Why are we here”

“What are you, insane”

“How can we expect him to give more than we ourselves are willing to give”

28) Synecdoche

Synecdoche, meaning simultaneous understanding. You know how a square is a rectangle, but a rectangle isn’t necessarily a square? If you referred to all rectangles as “squares,” you’d have a synecdoche: a rhetorical device in which part of one thing is used to represent its whole. This differs slightly from metonymy, which refers to one thing by something related to it that is nevertheless not part of it. If you referred to an old king as “greybeard,” that would be the former. If you referred to him as “the crown,” it would be the latter. As an example:

The word “coke” means carbonated drink and people could easily understand for Coca-Cola or Pepsi

The word “Kleenex” is the universal word for anything you blow your nose on.

29) Tmesis

Have you ever, in a fit of outrage, referred to something un-effing-believable? If you have, congratulations on discovering a surprisingly useful rhetorical device: tmesis, the separation of one word into two parts, with a third word placed in between for emphasis.

30) Zeugma

Zeugma often used synonymously with syllepsis, is a grammatical trick that can be used rhetorically as well: placing two nouns with very different meanings in the same position in a sentence. Mark Twain was a master at this:

“They covered themselves with dust and glory.”

This might feel a bit like a list of fancy names for things you already do. If so, that’s great! You’re already well on your way to mastering the art of rhetoric. And, now that you know the specifics, you can take the next step: implementing it in your writing and public speaking swaying your audience onto your side.

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