Friendly Rhetorical Devices
Terms
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A harsh, disagreeable combination of sounds. e.g. drum stick knock
- Dissonance
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The repetition of similar vowel sounds. e.g. tilting at windmills
- Assonance
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Where words or phrases are repeated for emphasis. e.g. and my hands/and the skin about my bones/and the soft labouring of my lungs
- Repetition
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A figure of speech in which inanimate objects are given human qualities, or are represented as having human for. e.g love . . . will . . . fall asleep - her face turned to the wall.
- Personification
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A figure of speech in which a word or phrase that ordinarily describes one thing is used to describe another, thus making a comparison. e.g. the sea is a dog
- Metaphor
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The repetition of the same sounds or of the same kinds of sounds at the beginning of words or in stressed syllables. e.g. the dark deck is slavery.
- Alliteration
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The patterned, repeating changes of elements of sound or speech. e.g. tyger tyger burning bright/in the forests of the night.
- Rhythm
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The continuation of a sentence from one line or couplet of a poem to the next with no pause. e.g. working man's cafe sells/bunny chows.
- Enjambment
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A figure of speech in which two essentially unlike things are compared, often in a phrase introduced by like or as. e.g. And both scavengers gazing down . . . as if they were watching some odorless TV ad.
- Simile
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Correspondence of end sounds of words or of lines of verse. e.g. an when moon begin to glow/I half-caste human being/cast half-a-shadow.
- Rhyme