Rhetorical Devices

• ​Parallelism: The proximity of two or more phrases with identical or similar constructions, especially those expressing the same sentiment, but with slight modifications.

• Repetition: The reuse of words, phrases, ideas, or themes in your speech

• ​Anaphora is a rhetorical device that features the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive sentences, phrases, or clauses.

• ​Repetition and parallelism provide emphasis, structure, order, and balance in your speech, in addition to clarifying your argument.

​​Charged Language: words, phrases, images that arouse emotions (Heavy Connotations)

• ​The freedom fighters are no more than terrorists .

• ​A politician who supports reform might be described as "enthusiastic about reform" by people who support them, or as "a fanatic about reform" by people who don't support them ("fanatic" has a more negative connotation, and therefore describing the politician this way puts them in a negative light).

• ​Analogy: a comparison between two dissimilar things that reveals some kind of insight (not a simile or metaphor)

  • ​ is an effective device in terms of providing a new or deeper meaning about concepts through artistic use of language.

  • ​An analogy creates a comparison with the intent of explanation or indicating a larger point.

• ​Though these entities are different in terms of abstract concepts and tangible items, they are alike in the sense that a saucer holds and supports a cup as memory holds and supports love. This analogy provides an interesting image of the relationship between memory and love through the artistic comparison to the saucer and cup.

• But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.