Rhetorical Devices

Rhetorical devices are used to make the delivery of speeches and literature more entertaining and effective, especially considering the audience. It is used in poetry, prose, and speeches. It can also be used interchangeably with literary devices. However, it would be useful to think of rhetorical devices as figures of speech associated with oratory, argument, and debate. On the other hand, literary devices should be seen as being associated with literature.

What is a rhetorical device?

Rhetorical devices are figures of speech that deliberately use patterns in speech and writing to obtain an intended effect from the listener or reader. Everyone speaks and writes in patterns.

However, rhetoric represents a form of art in an oratory or argument where you deliberately study how to manipulate common or ordinary language or speech and make it into something extraordinary.

Painting of Marc Anthony's oration over the body of Caesar. George Edward Robertson: 1864.

A speaker or writer who knows how to use rhetorical devices effectively will be able to better gain the attention of the reader or convince them of the cause or argument being talked about. 

Now, there is plenty of great writing that does not use rhetorical devices; however, alot of the best writing and speeches are filled with it. In your own literary analysis, you will typically need knowledge of such devices. 

The different types of rhetorical devices

This includes the following:

1. Metaphor and simile

2. Repetition of words and phrases

3. Structural matters

4. Dramatic devices

Metaphor and simile refer to the comparison of one thing to another and is often used in poetry and literature. Repetition includes devices such as Anaphora (repetition at the start), Epistrophe (repetition at the end), and Anadiplosis (repetition of the ending at the beginning), Symploce (repetition at the end with a small change in the middle).

Structural matters refer to how the structure of a sentence can reinforce meaning and intended effect in written or spoken language. This includes:

1. Isocolon — Parallel structure

2. Chiasmus — Reversal of structure

3. Anastrophe — Inversion of words

4. Polyptoton — Repetition of the root

5. Polysyndeton — Using extra conjunctions

6. Asyndeton — Leaving out conjunctions

7. Ellipsis — Leaving out words

Dramatic devices are where we get closer to the politician’s way of talking. This refers to rhetorical figures used in speeches to amuse, impress, enrage, and entertain an audience. 

We have numerous examples of them in ancient history, recent history, modern life, and classic literature. One of the most famous examples is both based on ancient history and classical literature. 

I am referring to Mark Anthony’s speech that led to his murders losing their position of power and having to flee the city after it was delivered. You can take a look at Marlon Brando delivering an excerpt of it in Julius Caesar (1953), a film based on Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (1859): 

In that speech, Mark Anthony makes good use of a rhetorical device known as Praeteritio. This means saying things by not saying them.

And that’s just one of them. See how many you can recognize after familiarizing yourself with all the rhetorical figures mentioned in the article: 

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;

I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.

The evil that men do lives after them;

The good is oft interred with their bones;

So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus

Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:

If it were so, it was a grievous fault,

And grievously hath Caesar answer’d it.

Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest–

For Brutus is an honourable man;

So are they all, all honourable men–

Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral.

He was my friend, faithful and just to me:

But Brutus says he was ambitious;

And Brutus is an honourable man.

He hath brought many captives home to Rome

Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:

Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?

When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:

Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:

Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;

And Brutus is an honourable man.

You all did see that on the Lupercal

I thrice presented him a kingly crown,

Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?

Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;

And, sure, he is an honourable man.

I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,

But here I am to speak what I do know.

You all did love him once, not without cause:

What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?

O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,

And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;

My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,

And I must pause till it come back to me.

The speech begins with Mark Antony claiming that he came not to praise Caesar, but to bury him. He also claims that he has no desire to speak ill of the murderers of Caesar. However, by the end of the speech, the crowd is so enraged by the crime committed against Caesar that his murderers, Cassius and Brutus, along with their co-conspirators have to flee the city. 

Dramatic devices include a list of the following rhetorical figures: 

1. Praeteritio — Saying things by not saying them 

2. Aposiopesis — Breaking off in midstream 

3. Metanoia — Correcting oneself

4. Litotes — Rhetorical uses of the negative

5. Erotema — Rhetorical questions

6. Hypophora — Asking questions and answering them

7. Prolepsis — Anticipating objections and answering them

 By now, you must have noticed that many of these rhetorical devices have Greek names. Why is that? That’s because rhetoric as we understand in the modern era is inherited from Greek tradition.

The Greek tradition of rhetoric

It is true that many cultures or languages have their native forms of rhetoric in either writing or speech. But rhetoric as understood and practiced in Western literary tradition is inherited from the Ancient Greeks.

Greek literary art is highly dependent on oral traditions. This is ironic. When we think of Ancient Greek literature, great works of written and epic literature come to mind, such as Homer's The Odyssey and The Illiad. However, even these great works of literature did not begin as written works.

The most recent research has shown that these works are rooted in oral tradition. They were performance pieces that would have been sung in whole or part as a form of entertainment.

Mark Edwards describes it in this way:

In the Homeric poems, it is possible to identify: a tradition of epic poetry whose features include: set verbal expressions that fit into specific sections of a Homeric verse and probably developed to simplify non-written and extemporaneous composition; regular structures for composing repeated scenes, allowing the length of a given scene to vary to suit immediate circumstances while enabling singer and audience to keep track of the sequence of essential items included in the scene; and story patterns likewise showing regular structures and occurring repeatedly both in epic and in myth.

In short, they were meant for public and communal consumption as song and entertainment. This is a far cry from the idea of the lone poet in his study among books quietly writing with quill and paper.

This is seen even with the great Greek philosophers, such as Socrates. The works of Socrates were passed down to us as lessons and conversations being recalled by his students who happened to record them for posterity.

The Socratic tradition involved engaging in public conversations, where Socrates kept asking a series of questions to the reader to simultaneously challenge and edify their thinking. It was not written literature.

After the Romans conquered Greece, they were quite unashamed to inherit this Greek tradition. The education of Roman elites would seem incomplete without a deep and thorough education in Greek letters (grammatikos) and Greek rhetoric and oratory.

Roman nobles looking at a career in public life in particular were interested in oratory. Noble families were not content with hiring private Greek tutors to instruct their children in Greece. Often the most ambitious among them would directly visit Athens to learn from their chief rhetoricians.

Mark Anthony was chief among them. His speech over the body of Julius Caesar was not simply a fancy of Shakespeare's imagination. It was recorded in history by Plutarch, a Roman historian whom Shakespeare relied heavily on to write the play.

Here is how Plutarch describes Mark Anthony’s career in Greek oratory:

Then Antony allied himself for a short time with Clodius, the most audacious and low-lived demagogue of his time, in the violent courses which were convulsing the state; but he soon became sated with that miscreant's madness, and fearing the party which was forming against him, left Italy for Greece, where he spent some time in military exercises and the study of oratory. He adopted what was called the Asiatic style of oratory, which was at the height of its popularity in those days and bore a strong resemblance to his own life, which was swashbuckling and boastful, full of empty exultation and distorted ambition.

Plutarch is obviously no fan of Mark Anthony, his specific Greek style of oratory, or his "low-life" political associate Clodius. He might be biased. But we could see the hazardous political effect of this rhetorical style for ourselves.

It turned a crowd from accepting the justification of Caesar's murder to clamoring for the blood of his murderers. There are plenty of examples of this in modern politics that I am sure you can recognize.

This demonstrates that rhetorical devices are not simply boring and outdated figures of speech found in old poems that no one can understand. It can be effectively used to communicate or even manipulate the public for better or for worse.

You can see that in modern politicians. For example, JFK's “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country” tries to express a noble sentiment. It’s asking citizens to contribute to the public good. It’s simple and easy to read or listen to. It’s also an effective use of anastrophe—an inversion of words. 

---

Cite this EminentEdit article

Antoine, M. (2024, September, 06). Rhetorical Devices. https://www.eminentediting.com/post/rhetorical-devices