"Terrific Twenty" -- 20 Rhetorical Devices

Personification

Attribution of personality to an impersonal thing. Example: "WAKANDA will no longer watch from the shadows." ~King T'Challa, speaking to the United Nations in the film Black Panther.

2nd Person

Author voice is outside the writing; uses (or implies) "you." Example: "My message is that we'll be watching YOU. This is all wrong. I shouldn't be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet YOU all come to us young people for hope. How dare YOU! You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I'm one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare YOU! ~Greta Thunberg's "Speech At The U.N. Climate Action Summit" (2019)

Tone

Author's implied attitude about a subject. My goal is not to wake up at forty with the bitter realization that I've wasted my life on a job I hated because I was forced to decide on a career in my teens. ~MTV cartoon character Daria when asked by her counselor to share her career goal (1990s)

PARALLELISM

Creating a balanced sentence by re-using the same word structure, especially for compound or complex sentences. "WE didn't LAND on PLYMOUTH ROCK; THE ROCK was LANDED on US." ~Malcolm X in the "Ballot or the Bullet" speech (1964)

Simile

Explicit comparison between two things, using "like" or "as." Example: "A WOMAN needs a MAN LIKE a FISH needs a BICYCLE." ~Gloria Steinem advocating women's rights in the 1960s.

Allusion

Expression designed to call something to mind without mentioning it explicitly; an indirect or passing reference. Example: "Five score years ago a great American in whose symbolic shadow we stand today signed the Emancipation Proclamation." ~Martin Luther King, Jr., referencing President Abraham Lincoln (1963)

ANALOGY

Figure of speech or comparison (e.g. simile, metaphor, personification, symbol) for desired emphasis. Example: "Huh, looks like HEAVEN IS EASIER to get into THAN ARIZONA STATE." ~Ned Flanders after Homer Simpson arrives in Heaven.

Attacking the Opposition

Identifying a logical fallacy and using the source material's faulty reasoning and/or words against an opposing argument. Example: "But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love?" Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail (1963)

Metaphor

Implied comparison through figurative use of words, often using the "to be" verb. Example: "LIFE [IS] but a WALKING SHADOW; a POOR PLAYER, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage." ~ Macbeth from the Shakespeare play

1st Person

Narrative voice is in the composition, and sharing his or her thoughts and feelings; uses "I, me, my, our, us, we, myself, ourselves." Example: "So let US not be blind to OUR differences, but let US also direct attention to OUR common interests and the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if WE cannot end now OUR differences, at least WE can help make the world safe for diversity. For in the final analysis, OUR most basic common link is that WE all inhabit this small planet. WE all breathe the same air. WE all cherish OUR children's futures. And WE are all mortal." ~President John F. Kennedy's "American University Commencement Address" or "Peace Speech" (1963)

3rd Person

Narrator is outside the story; uses "he, she, them, they, him, her, his, her, and their." Twenty years ago over 17 million Americans united in a grape boycott campaign that transformed the simple act of refusing to buy grapes into a powerful and effective force against poverty and injustice. Through the combined strengths of a national boycott, California farm workers won many of the same rights as other workers--the right to organize and negotiate with growers. ~Cesar Chavez's "Wrath of Grapes" speech (1986)

Symbol

Object, act, and/or character that symbolizes something more than its literal meaning. Example: "Involuntarily I glanced seaward — and distinguished nothing except a single GREEN LIGHT, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock." ~in F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel, The Great Gatsby, the green light symbolizes the TITLE CHARACTER'S AMERICAN DREAM.

Antithesis

Opposition to or contrast of ideas or words in a balanced or parallel construction. Example: "Ask NOT what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." ~President John F. Kennedy in his Inaugural Address

Rhetorical Question

Question used for rhetorical effect, not needing to be answered. Example: "Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation? Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled, that force must be called in to win back our love? Let us not deceive ourselves, sir." ~Patrick Henry, Speech to the Virginia Convention (1775)

Motif

Recurring unifying element (e.g. image, symbol, character type, action, idea, object or phrase) in a composition. Example: In Elizabeth Cady Stanton's "Solitude of Self" speech, she repeats the word "solitude."

REPETITION

Repeating a word, phrase, or a sentence with purpose. Example: "All you need is LOVE, all you need is LOVE, All you need is LOVE, LOVE, LOVE, is all you need." ~Beatles lyric (1967)

Anaphora

Repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses, or lines. Example: "So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania. Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado. Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California. But not only that: Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia. Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee. Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring." Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in his "I Have a Dream" speech (1963)

Anadiplosis

Repetition of a word or phrase that ends one clause at the beginning of the next. Example: "Fear leads to ANGER; ANGER leads to HATE; HATE leads to suffering." ~Yoda from Star Wars

Antistrophe

Repetition of the same word or phrase at the end of successive clauses. Example: "In 1931, ten years ago, Japan invaded Manchukuo -- WITHOUT WARNING. In 1935, Italy invaded Ethiopia -- WITHOUT WARNING. In 1938, Hitler occupied Austria -- WITHOUT WARNING... And now Japan has attacked Malaya and Thailand -- and the United States -- WITHOUT WARNING." ~President Franklin D. Roosevelt attacking the ethos of Japan shortly after Pearl Harbor.

Diction

Word choice to influence their reader perception or to establish author's voice or tone. Example: Authors like Mark Twain or Charles Dickens would write "wuz," "iz" "wer" and "sez" instead of writing "was," "is" "were," and "says." This vernacular writing is much truer to the way that these words are actually pronounced.