Rhetorical Terms Presentation #7

1. Rhetorical Terms Presentation #7 By: Meghan, Sarah, and Chops

2. Antanaclasis [ant-an-uh-klas-is] repetition of word from earlier phrase, especially of same word with different meaning.

3. Examples: • That company is terrible company. • Don’t worry; the judge won’t judge you. • “He was a puli--a Hungarian sheepdog with a face full of hair. I am a German, with a face full of hair.” (Why My Dog is not a Humanist, Kurt Vonnegut) • “You just cover up… and hope you wake up the next morning.” (Amazing Grace, Jonathan Kozol)

4. Aposiopesis [ap-uh-sahy-uh-pee-sis] a form of ellipse by which a speaker comes to a halt, seemingly overcome by passion, inability, or unwillingness to proceed.

5. Examples • "Why, I'll . . . ." • “So…” • “I got a beautiful letter from her and I put in on my bedroom wall,” she says. • “Beautiful handwriting…” • “I was less happy that the Sinclair C5 electric tricycle was also on that list, but it was a salutary reminder that not all innovations succeed... There is no question that for many kinds of reference works, the future of the book is electronic, but is it realistic to suppose ‘the novel of the future’ will one day also become electronic?” (The Future of the Novel, Peter James)

6. Chiasmus [kahy-az-muh s] called "reverse parallelism," since the second part of a grammatical construction is balanced or paralleled by the first part, only in reverse order. Instead of an A,B structure paralleled by another A,B structure, the A,B will be followed by B,A.

7. Examples: •  John said little and knew much; Marc knew nothing and spoke at length. • Susan walked in, and out rushed Mary.

8. Diacope [di-AK-oh-pee] A rhetorical term for the repetition of a word or phrase broken up by one or more intervening words; usually to express deep feeling

9. Examples • Fire, hot fire, burned across the town. • “Why?” he asked, “Why?” • "Barbara. My dear Barbara.” (Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone, James Baldwin) • “We’re out of cookies. I ate a whole bag of cookies.” (Amazing Grace, Jonathan Kozol)

10. Epanalepsis ep-an-a-lep'-sis The epanalepsis is a figure of speech defined by the repetition of the initial word or words of a clause or sentence at the end. The beginning and the end are the two positions of stronger emphasis in a sentence; so, by having the same phrase in both places, the speaker calls special attention to it.

11. Example • The king is dead, long live the king. • He is noticeable for nothing in the world except for the markedness by which he is noticeable for nothing.”(Edgar Allan Poe, "The Literati of New York City." Godey's Lady's Book, Sep. 1846) • "Believe not all you can hear, tell not all you believe." —Native American proverb • If I wanna die, I'll die right here, right now fightin' you -- if I wanna die." -- delivered by Will Smith (from the movie Ali)

12. Hypotyposis hy-po-ty-po'-sis A vivid, picturesque description of scenes or events.

13. Examples • "Mornings, a transparent pane of ice lies over the meltwater. I peer through and see some kind of waterbug-perhaps a leech-paddling like a sea turtle between green ladders of lakeweed. (Gretel Ehrlich, "Spring") • "In our kitchen, he would bolt his orange juice (squeezed on one of those ribbed glass sombreros and then poured off through a strainer) and grab a bite of toast (the toaster a simple tin box, a kind of little hut with slit and slanted sides, that rested over a gas burner and browned one side of the bread, in stripes, at a time)…”(John Updike, "My Father on the Verge of Disgrace," in Licks of Love: Short Stories and a Sequel, 2000) • "We hear the axe. We see the flame of burning cabins and hear the cry of the savage." Francis Bellamy, author of the Pledge of Allegiance

14. Isocolon A succession of main clauses of approximately equal length and corresponding structure.

15. Examples • “I came, I saw, I conquered.” • · "They have suffered severely, but they have fought well." Winston Churchill Speech to the House of Commons June 18, 1940 • · "Let each man search his conscience and search his speeches." Winston Churchill Speech to the House of Commons June 18, 1940 • · "I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse." Charles V • · "Many will enter. Few will win" Nabisco

16. Metanoia a device used to retract a statement just made, and then state it in a better way. It is used to strengthen it the recent statement, or weaken it.

17. Examples • Weakening: "I will murder you. You shall be punished.” • Strengthening: “I still fall short of it through my own fault, and through not observing the admonitions of the gods, and, I may almost say, their direct instructions.” • Fido was the friendliest of all St. Bernard's, nay of all dogs. • The chief thing to look for in impact sockets is hardness; no, not so much hardness as resistance to shock and shattering.

18. Paralipsis [par-uh-lip-sis] When a rhetor refuses to continue with their current discussion, or passes over the rest of the conversation, or admits that they do not know what else to say.

19. Examples • Let's pass swiftly over the vicar's predilection for cream cakes. Let's not dwell on his fetish for Dolly Mixture. Let's not even mention his rapidly increasing girth. No, no--let us instead turn directly to his recent work on self-control and abstinence."(Tom Coates, Plasticbag.org, Apr. 5, 2003) • "'Your boyhood, indeed, which you dedicated to intemperance of all kinds, I would discuss, if I thought this the right time. But at the present I advisedly leave that aside. This too I pass by, that the tribunes have reported you as irregular in military service.'" (from Rhetorica ad Herennium) • "The music, the service at the feast,The noble gifts for the great and small,The rich adornment of Theseus's palace . . .All these things I do not mention now."(Chaucer, "The Knight's Tale," The Canterbury Tales) • It would be unseemly for me to dwell on Senator Kennedy's drinking problem, and too many have already sensationalized his womanizing...

20. Paraphrasis Rewording something in less technical terminology; rewording for the purpose of clarification.

21. Examples • Citing a person’s work. The linguistic criticism of Nineteen Eighty-Four has focused primarily on Newspeak as a language and on Orwell's ideas about the relationship between language and thought. It has largely ignored, however, the literary language Orwell used in writing Nineteen Eighty-Four. Indeed, the few critical remarks about Orwell's use of language have generally been negative — sometimes attributing the dull, monotonous, dry writing style to Orwell's career as a journalist or to the phlegmatic topic of his novel. Irving Howe, for example, writes that the style of 1984, which many readers take to be drab or uninspired or sweaty, would have been appreciated by someone like Defoe, since Defoe would have immediately understood how the pressures of Orwell's subject, like the pressures of his own, demand a gritty and hammering factuality. The style of 1984 is the style of a man whose commitment to a dreadful vision is at war with the nausea to which that vision reduces him. So acute is this conflict that delicacies of phrasing or displays of rhetoric come to seem frivolous — he has no time, he must get it all down. Those who fail to see this, I am convinced, have succumbed to the pleasant tyrannies of estheticism; they have allowed their fondness for a cultivated style to blind them to the urgencies of prophetic expression. The last thing Orwell cared about when he wrote 1984, the last thing he should have cared about, was literature. In "The Uses of Passivity," Kies argues that the critic's reactions to Orwell's writing style in 1984 is wrong. Most critics charge that the novel's style is dry and lifeless, attributing this either to Orwell's career as a journalist or to the novel's dreary topic. Even one critic's modest defense of Orwell's style strikes Kies as weak (229).

22. Skotison Intentionally obscure speech or writing, designed to confuse an audience rather than clarify an issue. Purposeful obscurity.

23. Examples • "I would say the biggest thing in baseball at the present time now, and with the money that is coming in, and so forth, and with the annuity fund for the players, you can't allow the commissioner to just take everything sitting there, and take everything insofar as money is concerned, but I think he should have full jurisdiction over the player and player's habits, and the way the umpires and ball clubs should conduct their business in the daytime and right on up tight up here."(Casey Stengel, testimony on July 8, 1958 at the Senate Anti-Trust and Monopoly Subcommittee Hearing) • He pulled the boy closer. Just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever, he said. You might want to think about that.You forget some things, don't you?Yes. You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget. –The Road • I am not asking anyone to surrender. I am asking everyone to declare the victory of peace. –Tony Blair, Address to Irish Parliament • Seeing the look on my face, she says, “Some of them wear G-strings and a pair of tiny shorts. –Amazing Grace

24. Zeugma

25. Examples • He milked the situation and the cow. • "Kill all the poys [boys] and luggage!"(Fluellen in William Shakespeare's Henry V) • "He carried a strobe light and the responsibility for the lives of his men."(Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried) • "The theme of the Egg Hunt is 'learning is delightful and delicious'--as, by the way, am I."(Allison Janney as C.J. Cregg in The West Wing) • Dark of the invisible moon. The nights now only slightly less black. By day the banished sun circles the earth like a grieving mother with a lamp. –The Road • Athletic proficiency is a mighty good servant, and like so many other good servants, a mighty bad master. –Theodore Roosevelt • “I call them spies because they are so vigilant and so observant.” – Amazing Grace