AP Bell Ringers: Rhetorical Devices I can define rhetorical devices and explain their individual rhetorical purposes.

Directions: Each day, we will learn a new rhetorical device. These are some of the terms you will use when discussing rhetorical strategies. You will write down the device, define it, write down the examples, and then, on your own, try to explain what purpose it might serve in a rhetorical text.

Day 1: Allusion Definition: Making references to another *well-known* historical figure/event, work of art, piece of literature/music/film, religious figure, myth, etc. Examples: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/mp3clips/figures/georgewbushallusion.mp3 “Iran and ISIS are competing for the crown of militant Islam. Both want to impose a militant Islamic empire first on the region and then on the entire world. They just disagree among themselves who will be the ruler of that empire. In this deadly game of thrones, there’s no place for America or for Israel.” –Benjamin Netanyahu

Day 2: Anadiplosis Definition: Repetition that occurs when the last word or terms in one sentence, clause, or phrase is/are repeated at or very near the beginning of the next sentence, clause, or phrase. Examples: “My father was very sure about certain matters pertaining to the universe. To him all good things -- trout as well as eternal salvation --come by grace and grace comes by art and art does not come easy.” “Kinetic energy is also known as the energy of motion. A vehicle's energy of motion doubles when its weight doubles. When a vehicle's weight doubles, it needs about twice the distance to stop.”

Day 3: Anaphora Definition: Repetition that occurs when the first word or set of words in one sentence, clause, or phrase is/are repeated at or very near the beginning of successive sentences, clauses, or phrases. Examples: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/mp3clips/figures/hillaryclintonanaphora.mp3 “What we need in the United States is not division. What we need in the United States is not hatred. What we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness; but is love and wisdom and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country whether they be white or whether they be black.” –Robert F. Kennedy

Day 4: Epistrophe Definition: Repetition that occurs when the last word or set of words in one sentence, clause, or phrase is repeated one or more times at the end of successive sentences, clauses, or phrases. Examples: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/mp3clips/figures/abelincolnepistrophe.mp3 “I said you're afraid to bleed. [As] long as the white man sent you to Korea, you bled. He sent you to Germany, you bled. He sent you to the South Pacific to fight the Japanese, you bled. You bleed for white people. But when it comes time to seeing your own churches being bombed and little black girls be[ing] murdered, you haven't got no blood.” –Malcolm X

Day 5: Parallelism Definition: Figure of balance identified by a similarity in the syntactical structure of a set of words in successive phrases, clauses, sentences; successive words, phrases, clauses with the same or very similar grammatical structure. This figure often occurs with others such as antithesis, anaphora, asyndeton, Epistrophe, etc. Examples: “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” –John F. Kennedy “We have seen the state of our Union in the endurance of rescuers, working past exhaustion. We've seen the unfurling of flags, the lighting of candles, the giving of blood, the saying of prayers -- in English, Hebrew, and Arabic.” –George W. Bush

Day 6: Polysyndeton Definition: Figure of addition and emphasis which intentionally uses an excessive number of conjunctions in successive words or clauses. Examples: “And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind:and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth after his kind,and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.” –Genesis 1:24-25 (KJV) http://www.americanrhetoric.com/mp3clips/figures/barbarajordanpolysyndeton.mp3

Day 7: Asyndeton Definition: Figure of omission in which normally occurring conjunctions (and, or, but, for, nor, so, yet) are intentionally omitted in successive phrases, or clauses; a string of words not separated by normally occurring conjunctions. Examples: “From now on we are enemies, you and I -- because you choose for your instrument a boastful, lustful, smutty, infantile boy.” F. Murray Abraham (Amadeus) “I speak here as a politician and also as a Catholic -- a layperson baptized and raised in the pre-Vatican II Church, educated in Catholic schools, attached to the Church first by birth, then by choice, now by love.” –Mario Cuomo

Day 8: Antithesis Definition: Figure of balance in which two contrasting ideas are intentionally juxtaposed, usually through parallel structure; a contrasting of opposing ideas in adjacent phrases, clauses, or sentences. Examples: “Those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will some day come to pass for all the world. As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to touch him: 'Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not.‘” –Edward Kennedy “The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.” –Abraham Lincoln