What are Rhetorical Strategies?

1. What are Rhetorical Strategies? American Literature K. Matteson

2. What is “rhetoric”? • Rhetoric is the “art or study of effective language.” • Effective language is language used to an effect – this includes writing that accomplished the writer’s goal. The writer’s goal was to communicate a specific idea. • Therefore, rhetoric may be described as “persuasive use of language” and “rhetorical strategies” are techniques by which writers persuade readers.

3. Rhetorical Strategies: • Allusion: A reference in one piece of writing to another piece of literature, historical or famous event. Example: Plan ahead: it wasn't raining when Noah built the ark. --Richard Cushing • Analogy compares two things, which are alike in several respects, for the purpose of explaining or clarifying some unfamiliar or difficult idea or object by showing how the idea or object is similar to some familiar one. Example: Knowledge always desires increase: it is like fire, which must first be kindled by some external agent, but which will afterwards propagate itself. --Samuel Johnson

4. Anaphora is the repetition of the same word or words at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses, or sentences, commonly in conjunction with climax and with parallelism. Example: To think on death it is a misery,/ To think on life it is a vanity;/ To think on the world verily it is,/ To think that here man hath no perfect bliss. –Peacham

5. Hyperbole deliberately exaggerates conditions for emphasis or effect. Example: I said "rare," not "raw." I've seen cows hurt worse than this get up and get well. • Understatement deliberately expresses an idea as less important than it actually is, either for ironic emphasis or for politeness and tact. Example: Last week I saw a woman flayed, and you will hardly believe how much it altered her person for the worse. --Jonathan Swift

6. Metaphor compares two different things by speaking of one in terms of the other. A metaphor asserts that one thing is another thing. Example: Life is a long, hard road. • Simile is a  comparison between two different things that resemble each other in at least one way. Example: The soul in the body is like a bird in a cage.

7. Rhetorical question is not answered by the writer, because its answer is obvious or obviously desired, and usually just a yes or no. • Parallelism is recurrent syntactical similarity. Example:

8. Personification metaphorically represents an animal or inanimate object as having human attributes Example: Your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground. • Repetition: Repeating phrases or clauses for emphasis. Example: “I have a dream.”

9. Humor • Humor can be used in very persuasive ways. It can be used to “win you over,” to make you like the writer and, therefore, like his or her ideas. Humor comes in many forms. • hyperbole (exaggeration) • understatement • irony (verbal, situational, dramatic, and cosmic) • sacrasm

10. Attitude, Tone, or Mood • These three literary terms are essentially the same. You can think of an ATM machine to help you remember them. They are by definition the emotional feelings aroused by the chosen diction. Sometimes you can tell the emotional state of the writer (or the writing) by examining individual words. Writers who choose diction as a means to contribute to tone are using tone as a rhetorical technique.