Rhetorical device - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Log in / create account

Article Talk

Read Edit View history

Rhetorical device
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Main page

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it

or discuss these issues on the talk page.

Contents
Featured content

It is written like a personal reflection or essay

rather than an encyclopedic description of the
subject. Tagged since January 2011.

Current events
Random article
Donate to Wikipedia

It needs attention from an expert on the subject.

WikiProject Linguistics or the Linguistics Portal may be able to
help recruit one. Tagged since June 2011.

Interaction
Help
About Wikipedia
Community portal
Recent changes
Contact Wikipedia
Toolbox

In rhetoric, a rhetorical device or resource of language is a technique that an author or

speaker uses to convey to the listener or reader a meaning with the goal of persuading him or her
towards considering a topic from a different perspective.
Contents [hide]
1 Goal of rhetorical devices

Print/export

2 Irony and metaphor

Languages

3 Examples
3.1 Sonic devices

Deutsch
Franais

Nederlands
Polski

3.2 Altered signification devices

4 External links

Goal of rhetorical devices

[edit]

While rhetorical devices may be used to evoke an emotional response in the audience, there are
other reasons to use them. The goal of rhetoric is to persuade towards a particular frame of view or a
particular course of action, so appropriate rhetorical devices are used to construct sentences
designed both to make the audience receptive through emotional changes and to provide a rational
argument for the frame of view or course of action.

Irony and metaphor

[edit]

Two rhetorical devices are irony and metaphor.

The use of irony in rhetoric is primarily to convey to the audience an incongruity that is often used as
a tool of humor in order to deprecate or ridicule an idea or course of action.
The use of metaphor in rhetoric is primarily to convey to the audience a new idea or meaning by
linking it to an existing idea or meaning with which the audience is already familiar. By making the
new appear to be linked to or a type of the old and familiar, the person using the metaphor hopes to
help the audience understand the new.

Examples

[edit]

An example of rhetorical device is this passage attributed to a speech by Abraham Lincoln about a
political adversary in which Lincoln said that his adversary had "dived down deeper into the sea of
knowledge and come up drier than any other man he knew".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetorical_device[27/02/2012 09:27:21]

Rhetorical device - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This attributed quote uses a body of water as a metaphor for a body of knowledge with the ironical
idea of someone who gained so little from his education that he achieved the impossible of jumping
into a body of water and climbing back out without getting wet.

Sonic devices

[edit]

Sonic devices depend on sound.

1. Alliteration is the repetition of the beginning sound of a word. This device is used to emphasize
something, especially some kind of threat, bad or danger. For example, "The zoo kept several selfish
seals".
2. Assonance is the repetition of a similar set of sounds, it is used to emphasize intensity, evil, etc.
3. Cacophony is the eruption of chaotic, awful sound.
4. Onomatopoeia uses one or more onomatopoeic words (words that sound like what the author is
describing).

Altered signification devices

[edit]

Devices of altered signification shift the meaning of words.

1. Metaphor directly says something is something else. For example, "his beard was a lion's mane".
2. Simile is a gentler form of metaphor which tends to use "as" or "like" to compare something to
something else. For example, "his beard was like a lion's mane."

External links

[edit]

Online Resource of Rhetorical Devices

Handbook of rhetorical devices
Rhetorical Figures in Sound
Categories: Rhetorical techniques

This page was last modified on 24 February 2012 at 19:13.

Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. See Terms of
use for details.
Wikipedia is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.
Contact us
Privacy policy

About Wikipedia

Disclaimers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetorical_device[27/02/2012 09:27:21]

Mobile view