1. The Elements of Eloquence: Anaphora
Definition: Starting each sentence with the same words.
Effect:
Very simply creates very memorable speeches.
People might not remember exactly what your speech says, but they’ll remember the anaphora – do you know what Martin Luther King’s dream was? Probably not. But you know that he had a dream because he said so LOTS of times.

2. The Elements of Eloquence: Anaphora
Winston Churchill used anaphora in one of the most famous speeches ever. You should try it.
Try your own version.
You could start with:
I love…
I hate…
I will…
I will never…
An idea of your own…
We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the
hills; we shall never surrender.

3. The Elements of Eloquence: Epiphora
Definition: Ending each sentence with the same words.
Effect:
Same as anaphora - it creates very memorable speeches. It gives emphasis to a particular idea. As a rhetorical or stylistic device, it is brought into action to make appeal to the emotions of the audience in order to emphasise a point or give a sense of an unavoidable conclusion.
Famous Example:
Captain Jack Sparrow
She's safe, just like I promised. She's all set to marry Norrington, just like she promised. And you get to die for her, just like you promised.

4. Write your own example of epiphora.
The Elements of Eloquence: Epiphora
She takes just like a woman, yes, she does. She makes love just like a woman, yes, she does. And she aches just like a woman, But she breaks just like a little girl.  
Write your own example of epiphora.
These endings might help :
...just like I told you.
...is what it is to be decent.
...that is cold.
...is a lie.
...nobody knows.
- Bob Dylan

5. The Elements of Eloquence: Epiplexis
Definition: A whole series of rhetorical questions, one after the other after the other.
Effect:
From the Greek, ‘strike at, rebuke’. This is a devastating device which is solely devised to batter your opponent into submission. It is used to draw the reader to an obvious conclusion through the use of pointed, relentless and devastating questions. Often used to embarrass or belittle the opposing ideas.
Famous Example:
Frederick Douglass Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for republicans? Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation, as a matter beset with great difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard to understand?

6. - William Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice)
The Elements of Eloquence: Epiplexis
‘I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?’
- William Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice)
Write your own example of epiplexis.
Think of all the questions you could about these topics:
To attack the slave trade.
To attack racist ideas.
Why celebrities are paid so much.
Why someone might get plastic surgery.

7. The Elements of Eloquence: Epizeuxis
Definition: Repeating a word immediately in exactly the same sense.
Effect:
It’s the ultimate way of emphasising how important something is.
You’re all familiar with the ‘rule of three’ or ‘triplets’, but this is even better at making a strong point. Just don’t over-use it – you’ll sound like an utter plum. An utter plum.
Famous Examples:
Macbeth
O horror, horror, horror.
Tony Blair
Ask me my three main points for government and I tell you: education, education and education.

8. Write your own example of epizeuxis.
The Elements of Eloquence: Epizeuxis
The first rule of fight club is: you do not talk about fight club. The second rule of fight club is: you do not talk about fight club.
Write your own example of epizeuxis.
These topics might help you:
A news story you feel strongly about.
Animal cruelty.
A film you’d recommend.
A song you despise.

9. The Elements of Eloquence: Congeries
Definition: The Latin for ‘heap’. It’s basically a posh word for a huge list.
Effect:
People don’t talk in lists, so it can create a breathless, flowing sentence filled with verbs, or nouns, adjectives, ideas and images.
Famous Example:
Shakespeare:
You starveling, you elf-skin, you dried neat’s tongue, you bull’s pizzle, you stock-fish! O for breath to utter what is like thee! You tailor’s yard, you sheath, you bowcase, you vile standing tuck…

10. This is how to use congeries!
The Elements of Eloquence: Congeries
The tree was planted in the middle of a great round table, and towered high above their heads. It was brilliantly lighted by a multitude of little tapers; and everywhere sparkled and glittered with bright objects. There were rosy-cheeked dolls, hiding behind the green leaves; and there were real watches (with movable hands, at least, and an endless capacity of being wound up) dangling from innumerable twigs; there were French-polished tables, chairs, bedsteads, wardrobes, eight-day clocks, and various other articles of domestic furniture (wonderfully made, in tin, at Wolverhampton), perched among the boughs, as if in preparation for some fairy housekeeping; there were jolly, broad-faced little men, much more agreeable in appearance than many real men--and no wonder, for their heads took off, and showed them to be full of sugar-plums; there were fiddles and drums; there were tambourines, books, work-boxes, paint-boxes, sweetmeat-boxes, peep-show boxes, and all kinds of boxes; there were trinkets for the elder girls, far brighter than any grown-up gold and jewels; there were baskets and pincushions in all devices; there were guns, swords, and banners; there were witches standing in enchanted rings of pasteboard, to tell fortunes; there were teetotums, humming-tops, needle-cases, pen-wipers, smelling-bottles, conversation-cards, bouquet-holders; real fruit, made artificially dazzling with gold leaf; imitation apples, pears, and walnuts, crammed with surprises; in short, as a pretty child, before me, delightedly whispered to another pretty child, her bosom friend, "There was everything, and more.
This is how to use congeries!
Write your own version.
Topics you might think about…
A great feast (maybe Christmas dinner?)
The things you love about my lessons.

11. The Elements of Eloquence: Polysyndeton
Definition:
From the Greek, ‘bound together’. A different way of handling a list or a series. Polysyndeton places a conjunction (and, or) after every term in the list.
Effect: It can give an emphatic sense of grandeur to a bare list of things, making it seem more epic: drawing it out to emphasise abundance and variety.
Famous Example:
Susan Hill (Author of A Woman in Black):
Rain on all the silent streets and squares, alleys and courts, gardens and churchyards and stone steps and nooks and crannies of the city.

12. - F Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby)
The Elements of Eloquence: Polysyndeton
By seven o'clock the orchestra has arrived, no thin five-piece affair, but a whole pitful of oboes and trombones and saxophones and viols and cornets and piccolos, and low and high drums...The bar is in full swing, and floating rounds of cocktails permeate the garden outside, until the air is alive with chatter and laughter, and casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot, and enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other's names.
- F Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby)
This is how to use polysyndeton
Write your own version.
Topics you might think about…
Food at a great feast.
Animals in Noah’s Ark
Sights at a festival.

13. The Elements of Eloquence: Anadiplosis
Definition: Starting a new sentence/clause with the last word of the last sentence/clause.
Effect:
Creates a flow of ideas. Links ideas together. Can create a sense of inevitability.
The technique highlights the important words in each clause and emphasises their importance and the idea that they belong together: drink leads to drunkenness, drunkenness leads to hangovers, hangovers lead to suffering…
Famous Examples:
Yoda
Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hatred. Hatred leads to suffering.
Jesse Jackson
Suffering breeds character. Character breeds faith.

14. The Elements of Eloquence: Anadiplosis
Once you change your philosophy, you change your thought pattern. Once you change your thought pattern, you change your attitude. Once you change your attitude, it changes your behaviour pattern and then you go onto some action.
How has Malcolm X used anadiplosis differently?
Think of your own example related to one of the following topics:
The benefits of hard work.
The drawbacks of laziness.

15. The Elements of Eloquence: Polyptoton
Definition: Using the same word in different forms within a phrase or sentence.
Effect:
Creates memorable phrases which stick in the mind or create effective soundbites.
This technique was often used in the Bible. Think about the Lord’s Prayer – “give us this day our daily bread” or Moses’ wife saying “I have been a stranger in a strange land” are both examples.
Famous Examples:
The Beatles
Nothing you can do that can’t be done.
Nothing you can sing that can’t be sung.
William Shakespeare Love is not love which alters when alteration finds.

16. The Elements of Eloquence: Polyptoton
Copy out the quote.
Underline the polyptoton.
Think of your own example related to one of the following topics:
Fighting
Strength:
Skill:
Food Greed: Hunger:

17. The Elements of Eloquence: Antithesis
Definition: A phrase using opposite or contrasting ideas.
Effect:
Creates a sense of balance between two different ideas or elements.
This technique was often used in the Bible. God loved antithesis: “A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.”
Famous Examples:
Katy Perry
You’re hot then you’re cold. You’re yes then you’re no. You’re in then you’re out. You’re up then you’re down.
TS Eliot Immature poets imitate. Mature poets steal.

18. The Elements of Eloquence: Antithesis
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way.
How many examples of antithesis in the quotation on the left?
Which one is the best?
Think of your own example related to one of the following topics:
A TV programme you feel strongly about.
A school rule you dislike but understand.
A sportsperson you hate but admire.

19. The Elements of Eloquence: Diacope
Definition: Repeating a phrase with a word or two stuck in between.
Effect:
Very simply creates snappy and memorable phrases.
This is a really easy technique to use – just look at the famous examples below.
You can also add a little bit of detail between the repeated words: Sunday, Bloody Sunday; Ignorance, Madam. Pure ignorance.
Famous Examples:
Bond. James Bond.
Run, Toto, run!
Burn, baby, burn. Disco inferno!
Crisis? What crisis?
Love me. Love me. Say that you love me.

20. The Elements of Eloquence: Diacope
Free at last. Free at last. Thank God almighty we are free at last.
(Martin Luther King’s epitaph)
How is this quotation different to the examples you’ve seen before?
Three of Shakespeare’s most famous quotations use diacope. What are they?
Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?
To be or not to be.
A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse.

21. The Elements of Eloquence: Isocolon
Definition: Two clauses that are structured in exactly the same way.
Effect:
Can be used to create lovely balance – or something more chaotic.
A nicely balanced example would be the old cliché: roses are red, violets are blue.
Something a little more destructive would be: float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.
Famous Examples:
Morning has broken, like the first morning. Blackbird has spoken, like the first bird.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
You pay your money, you take your choice.

22. Write your own example of isocolon.
The Elements of Eloquence: Isocolon
Where I’m going, you can’t follow.
What I’ve got to do, you can’t be any part of.
Write your own example of isocolon.
Copy out the example from Casablanca, but change the verbs to alter the meaning.

23. The Elements of Eloquence: Prolepsis
Definition: Using a pronoun before the noun is introduced.
Effect:
Can create mystery or surprise by revealing things in an odd way.
Normally, you use a noun and afterwards, when you want to refer to it, you can use a pronoun like ‘it’. The reader knows what the pronoun refers to because it appeared earlier in the sentence. Prolepsis messes with that.
Famous Examples:
Stevie Smith: Waving Not Drowning Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But he still lay moaning.
Philip Larkin: This Be the Verse
They f**k you up, your mum and dad.

24. Marley was dead: to begin with.
The Elements of Eloquence: Prolepsis
Marley was dead: to begin with.
This is one of the most famous opening lines of all time.
Where is it from?
Can you rewrite it using the rule of prolepsis?

25. The Elements of Eloquence: Litotes
Definition: Affirming something by denying its opposite.
Effect:
Offers a kind of understatement-by-negative.
This is surprisingly common. Look at the following conversation:
“Well, if it isn’t old Bertie. How are you?”
“Can’t complain, old boy, can’t complain.”
“Would it be awfully wrong to tempt you with a drink?”
“I wouldn’t say no.”
Famous Examples:
It’s not unusual to be loved by anyone
It’s not unusual to have fun with anyone.

26. The Elements of Eloquence: Litotes
“A not unblack dog was chasing a not unsmall rabbit across a not ungreen field.”
George Orwell HATED litotes. He wrote an essay attacking writers whose writing was not completely clear.
But Queen Victoria liked it, famously saying “We are not unamused”.
Who do you agree with and why?