RHETORIC

WHAT IS RHETORIC?

• To persuade
• To inform
• To express a personal thought
• To entertain
 RHETORICAL DEVICES THAT HELP WITH
STRATEGY AND STYLE

• Cohesion and coherence

• Your personality and attitude
• Make people remember or forget what you wrote
 EXAMPLES OF RHETORICAL PITFALLS

Here, as at Auschwitz and many other places in Europe, we are overcome by the
echo of the tears of so many. Men, women, and children cry out to us from the
depths of the horror that they knew. How can we fail to heed their cry? No one
can forget or ignore what happened. No one can diminish its scale.
Pope John Paul the second
 EXAMPLES OF RHETORICAL PITFALLS

I like my buddies from west Texas. I liked them when I was young, I liked them
when I was middle-age, I liked them before I was president, and I like them during
president, and I like them after president.
President Bush
 THE ACTUAL QUOTATION

Here, as at Auschwitz and many other places in Europe, we are overcome by the
echo of the heart-rending laments of so many. Men, women, and children cry out
to us from the depths of the horror that they knew. How can we fail to heed
their cry? No one can forget or ignore what happened. No one can diminish its
scale.
 CORRECTING BUSH

• I like my buddies from west Texas. I liked them when I was young, I liked them
when I was middle-aged, and I’ll like them when I’m old.

• I like my buddies from west Texas. I liked them before I was president, I like
them now that I am president, and I’ll like them after I’ve been president.
 THE FOUR AIMS OF RHETORIC
TO PERSUADE

The oldest and most recognized form of rhetoric.

Guide the perspectives of reader.
Arouse emotional response
Powerful imagery
Reputable sources
Bolster credibility
Politicians and lawyers: education, confidence, and precision
 THE FOUR AIMS OF RHETORIC
TO INFORM

• Learning and teaching

• The metaphor
 TO EXPRESS

• Less formal
• Personal thoughts
• Persuade your reader your ideas are worth reading
 TO ENTERTAIN

• Pull readers in to make them laugh and cry

 DEVICE 1: HYPERBOLE

• Exaggerate a part of your statement to give it focus or emphasis

• Example:
“What is causing the biggest problem is that there are over three billion people
on the planet.”

“The planet is getting so crowded we may have to take turns sitting down.”
 DEVICE 1: HYPERBOLE

• Energize your statement:

“There are more reasons for NASA to fund a trip to Jupiter than there are miles
in the journey.”
• Snap to attention
“At these words, the people became so silent you could hear a beating heart
from across the room.”
• Demonstrate the difference between two things
“Compared to the world during the last Ice Age, a Minnesota winter feels like
spring in Hawaii.”
 HYPERBOLE ACTIVITIES

• 1. My neighborhood
• 2. School in general
• 3. The weather
• 4.Your favorite or least favorite team
• 5. A television show
 UNDERSTATEMENT

• The force of a descriptive statement is less than what one would normally expect.
• Example
• A category five hurricane
• “a bit of weather”
• “Aristotle knew a thing or two”
• The concept is so self-explanatory that there is nothing you can add
• Readers come up with a conclusion themselves
• Humorous effect—contrast realitiy
 UNDERSTATEMENT

• “Whatever his faults, Sir Isaac Newton did have a fairly good mind for science.”
• “The middle East is currently having some political squabbles.”
• “To the uninitiated, neurophysiology can be a bit of a challenge.”

• The meal was

• Our team
• As a performer
• That movie was
 A MODEST PROPOSAL

• It is a melancholy object to those who walk through this great town or travel
in the country, when they see the streets, the roads, and cabin doors, crowded
with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in
rags and importuning every passenger for an alms. These mothers, instead of
being able to work for their honest livelihood, are forced to employ all their
time in strolling to beg sustenance for their helpless infants: who as they grow
up either turn thieves for want of work, or leave their dear native country to
fight for the Pretender in Spain, or sell themselves to the Barbadoes.
 A MODEST PROPOSAL

• I think it is agreed by all parties that this prodigious number of children in the
arms, or on the backs, or at the heels of their mothers, and frequently of their
fathers, is in the present deplorable state of the kingdom a very great
additional grievance; and, therefore, whoever could find out a fair, cheap, and
easy method of making these children sound, useful members of the
commonwealth, would deserve so well of the public as to have his statue set
up for a preserver of the nation.
 A MODEST PROPOSAL

• But my intention is very far from being confined to provide only for the
children of professed beggars; it is of a much greater extent, and shall take in
the whole number of infants at a certain age who are born of parents in effect
as little able to support them as those who demand our charity in the streets.
 A MODEST PROPOSAL

• As to my own part, having turned my thoughts for many years upon this
important subject, and maturely weighed the several schemes of other
projectors, I have always found them grossly mistaken in the computation. It is
true, a child just dropped from its dam may be supported by her milk for a
solar year, with little other nourishment; at most not above the value of 2s.,
which the mother may certainly get, or the value in scraps, by her lawful
occupation of begging; and it is exactly at one year old that I propose to
provide for them in such a manner as instead of being a charge upon their
parents or the parish, or wanting food and raiment for the rest of their lives,
they shall on the contrary contribute to the feeding, and partly to the clothing,
of many thousands.
 A MODEST PROPOSAL

• As to my own part, having turned my thoughts for many years upon this
important subject, and maturely weighed the several schemes of other
projectors, I have always found them grossly mistaken in the computation. It is
true, a child just dropped from its dam may be supported by her milk for a
solar year, with little other nourishment; at most not above the value of 2s.,
which the mother may certainly get, or the value in scraps, by her lawful
occupation of begging; and it is exactly at one year old that I propose to
provide for them in such a manner as instead of being a charge upon their
parents or the parish, or wanting food and raiment for the rest of their lives,
they shall on the contrary contribute to the feeding, and partly to the clothing,
of many thousands.
 A MODEST PROPOSAL

• The number of souls in this kingdom being usually reckoned one million and a
half, of these I calculate there may be about two hundred thousand couple
whose wives are breeders; from which number I subtract thirty thousand
couples who are able to maintain their own children, although I apprehend
there cannot be so many, under the present distresses of the kingdom; but this
being granted, there will remain an hundred and seventy thousand breeders. I
again subtract fifty thousand for those women who miscarry, or whose
children die by accident or disease within the year. There only remains one
hundred and twenty thousand children of poor parents annually born.
 A MODEST PROPOSAL

• The question therefore is, how this number shall be reared and provided for,
which, as I have already said, under the present situation of affairs, is utterly
impossible by all the methods hitherto proposed. For we can neither employ
them in handicraft or agriculture; we neither build houses (I mean in the
country) nor cultivate land: they can very seldom pick up a livelihood by
stealing, till they arrive at six years old, except where they are of towardly
parts, although I confess they learn the rudiments much earlier, during which
time, they can however be properly looked upon only as probationers, as I
have been informed by a principal gentleman in the county of Cavan, who
protested to me that he never knew above one or two instances under the
age of six, even in a part of the kingdom so renowned for the quickest
proficiency in that art.
 A MODEST PROPOSAL

• I am assured by our merchants, that a boy or a girl before twelve years old is
no salable commodity; and even when they come to this age they will not yield
above three pounds, or three pounds and half-a-crown at most on the
exchange; which cannot turn to account either to the parents or kingdom, the
charge of nutriment and rags having been at least four times that value.
• I shall now therefore humbly propose my own thoughts, which I hope will not
be liable to the least objection.
 A MODEST PROPOSAL

• I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in

London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious,
nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled;
and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.
 DEVICE 3 LITOTES

Emphasizes its point by using a word opposite to the condition

For example:
The trip across the mountain was a hard journey.
The trip was no easy journey
 DEVICE 3 LITOTES

• Not to seem arrogant

• “My daughter graduated from Harvard as magna cum laude—no small
accomplishment.”
 DEVICE 3 LITOTES

• Say what isn’t true, without committing as strongly to what is true.

Example # 1: “A cup of coffee would not be welcome.”

Example # 2: “It’s not the smartest idea I’ve ever heard of.”
Example # 3: “That store is not in the most convenient location.”
 EXERCISE 1

• Write five original statements that use litotes to emphasize a point or startle a
reader into paying attention.
• Example
• The former CEO’s lifestyle was not shabby, which may explain why the
company went bankrupt.
 EXERCISE 2

Rewrite the following using declarative sentences.

I cannot say that I think you are very generous to the ladies; for, whilst you are
proclaiming peace and good-will to men, emancipating all nations, you insist upon
retaining an absolute power over wives.(Abigail Adams, letter to John Adams)
I will multiply them, and they shall not be few; I will make them honored, and they
shall not be small.(Jeremiah 30:19)
Beowulf] raised the hard weapon by the hilt, angry and resolute – the sword wasn’t
useless to the warrior… (Beowulf, line 1575)