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Rhetorical Terms

Terms

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Amplification
General term for all of the ways that an argument, an explanation, or adescription can be expanded and enriched. A natural virtue in an oral culture, amplification provides "redundancy of information, cerimonial amplitude, and scope for a memorable syntax and diction".
Pun
A play on words, either on different senses of the same word or on the similar sense or sound of different words.
Metaphor
An implied comparison between two unlike things that actually have something important in common. Expresses the unfamiliar in terms of the familiar.
Auxesis
A gradual increase in intensity of meaning with words arranged in ascending order of force or importance.
Metonymy
A figure of speech in which one word or phrase is substituted for another with ich it is closely associated
Simile
A stated comparison (usually formed with "like" or "as") between two fundamentally dissimiar things that have certain qualities in common.
Antimetabole
The repetition of words, in successive clauses in reverse grammatical order.
Copia
Expansive richness as a stylistic goal.
Anaphora
Repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses or lines.
Paralipsis
Emphasizing a point by seeming to pass over it.
Personification
A figure of speech in which an inanimate object or abstraction is endowed with human qualities or abilities.
Synecdoche
A figure of speech in which a part is said to represent the whole, the whole for a part, the specific for the general, the generalor the specific, or the material for the thing made from it.
Alliteration
Repition of initial consonant sound.
Effectio
Personal description; a head-to-toe inventory of a persons physical attributes or charms.
Enargia
A visually powerful description that vividly recreats something or someone in words.
Apostrophe
1) Mark of punctuation used to indicate possessive case or omission of a letter from a word. 2) Rhetorical term for breaking off discourse to address some absent prson or thing, some abstract quality, an inanimate object, or nonexistent character.
Assonance
Identity or similarity in sound between internal vowels in words.
Attic Style
Brief, witty, sometimes epigrammatic style--opposite of the ornate Asiatic Style.
Parenthesis
The insertion of some verbal unit in a position that interrupts the normal syntactic flow of the sentence.
Euphuism
Elabortely patterned prose style characterized by extensive use of simile and illustration, balanced constructions, alliteration, and antithesis. This is generally considered a vice, though it can be used to good humerous effect.
Antithesis
Juxtaposition of contrasting ideas in balanced phrases.
Epiphora
Repitition of a word or phrase at the end of successive cluases or phrases.
Chiasmus
The reversal of grammatical structures in successive phrases or clauses.
Synathroesmus
The piling up of adjectives, often in the spirit of invective
Paradox
A statement that appears to contradict itself.
Litotes
A figure of speech consisting of an understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by negating its opposite.
Commoratio
Repition of a point several times in different words.
Accumulation
Figure of speech in which a speaker or writer gathers scattered poits and lists them together
Asiatic Style
A prolix or highly ornamented style
Epicrisis
Circumstance in which a speaker quotes a passage and comments on it.
Distinctio
An explicit reference to various meanings of a word--usually for the purpose of removing ambiguities.
Hyperbole
An extravagent statement; the use of exaggerated terms for the purpose of emphasis or heightened effect.
Onomatopoeia
The formation or use of words that imitate the sounds associated with the objects or actions they refer to.
Pleonasm
Redundancy; use of words to emphasize what is clear without them.
Epexegesis
Adding words or phrases to further clarify or specify a statement already made.
Epimone
Frequent repetition of the same plea in similar phrases or questions; dwelling on a point.
Paraphrase
A restatement of a text or passage in anotherform or other words, often to clarify meaning.
Understatement
Figure of speech in which a writer or a speaker deliberately makes a situation seem less important or serious than it is.
Apposition
Placing side-by-side two coordinate elements, the second of which serves as an explanation or modification ofthe first.
Oxymoron
A figure in which incongruous or contradictory terms appear side by side; a compressed paradox.

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