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Glossary of Rhetorical Terms
parable to rhetor
parable
Short and simple story that points a moral. Similar to exemplum
(a brief story used in medieval sermons to illustrate a moral) and fable.
- In the woods of the Far West there once lived a brown bear who
could take it or let it alone. He would go into a bar where they sold mead, a fermented
drink made of honey, and he would have just two drinks. Then he would put some money
on the bar and say, "See what the bears in the back room will have," and he
would go home. But finally he took to drinking by himself most of the day. He would
reel home at night, kick over the umbrella stand, knock down the bridge lamps, and ram his
elbows through the windows. Then he would collapse on the floor and lie there until
he went to sleep. His wife was greatly distressed and his children were very frightened.
At length the bear saw the error of his ways and began to reform.
In the end he became a famous teetotaler and a persistent temperance lecturer.
He would tell everybody that came to his house about the awful effects of drink,
and he would boast about how strong and well he had become since he gave up touching the
stuff. To demonstrate this, he would stand on his head and on his hands and he would
turn cartwheels in the house, kicking over the umbrella stand, knocking down the bridge
lamps, and ramming his elbows through the windows. Then he would lie down on the floor,
tired by his healthful exercise, and go to sleep. His wife was greatly distressed
and his children were very frightened.
Moral: You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backward.
(James Thurber, "The Bear Who Let It Alone," from Fables for Our Time)
paradox 
A statement that appears to contradict itself.
[Gk. "incredible"; contrary to opinion or expectation]
-"The swiftest traveler is he that goes afoot." (Henry David
Thoreau, Walden)
-"I do not love you except because I love you;
"I go from loving to not loving you,
"From waiting to not waiting for you
"My heart moves from cold to fire."
(Pablo Neruda)
-"There was only one catch and that
was Catch-22, which specified that concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers
that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could
be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy
and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if
he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't
have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to."
(Joseph Heller, Catch-22)
paralepsis
Emphasizing a point by seeming to pass over it.
See apophasis.
[Gk. "disregard"]
-"The music, the service at the feast,
The noble gifts for the great and small,
The rich adornment of Theseus's palace . . .
All these things I do not mention now."
(Chaucer, "The Knight's Tale" from The Canterbury Tales)
-"Have patience, gentle friends, I must not read it.
It is not meet you know how Caesar lov'd you."
(Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, III.ii.136-51)
parallelism
Similarity of structure in a pair or series of related
words, phrases, or clauses. (When the parallel elements are similar not only in
structure but in length [i.e., the same number of words, even the same number of
syllables], the scheme is called isocolon.
)
-"It is certain that if you were to behold the whole woman, there is that dignity
in her aspect, that composure in her motion, that complacency in her manner, that if her
form makes you hope, her merit makes you fear."
(Richard Steele, Spectator, No. 113)
-"Voltaire could both lick boots and put the boot in. He was at once opportunist
and courageous, cunning and sincere. He managed, with disconcerting ease, to
reconcile love of freedom with love of hours."
(Dominique Edde)
paranomasia
Punning, playing with words.
[Gk. "word-shunting"]
-"Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight . . ."
(Dylan Thomas, "Do not go gentle into that good night")
-"Look deep into our ryes." (Wigler's Bakery products)
-"All moanday, tearsday, wailsday, thumpsday, frightday, shatterday till the fear
of the Law."
(James Joyce, Finnegans Wake)
parataxis
Clauses or phrases arranged independently (a
coordinate, rather than a subordinate, construction). (Opposite of hypotaxis.)
[Gk. "placing side by side"]
-"Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better--splashed to their very
blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one another's umbrellas, in a general infection
of ill-temper, and losing their foothold at street corners . . .."
(Charles Dickens, Bleak House)
parenthesis
Insertion of some verbal unit in a position that
interrupts the normal syntactic flow of the sentence.
-"The moral flabbiness born of the exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess success.
That--with the squalid cash interpretation put on the word success--is our national
disease."
(William James, Letter to H. G. Wells)
-"Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(Which was rather late for me)--
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles' first LP."
(Philip Larkin, "Annus Mirabilis")
parison
Corresponding structure in a series of clauses, either
of same word to same word, or adjective to adjective, noun to noun, etc. (often found with isocolon), or equal
length of clause or sentence.
"I have lov'd, and got, and told,
But should I love, get, tell, till I were old,
I should not find that hidden mystery."
(Donne, "Mummy or Love's Alchemy")
"He that is to be saved will be saved, and he that is predestined to be damned
will be damned."
(Cooper, Last of the Mohicans)
pathos
Means of persuasion in classical rhetoric that appeals
to the audience's emotions.
[Gk. "to experience, suffer"]
See exuscitatio
for an extended example of a pathetic appeal.
-"But for everyone, surely, what we have gone through in this period--I am
addressing myself to the School--surely from this period of ten months, this is the
lesson:
Never give in. Never give in. Never,
never, never, never--in nothing, great or small, large or petty--never give in, except to
convictions of honour and good sense. Never
yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.
We stood all alone a year ago, and to many countries it seemed that our account was
closed, we were finished. All this tradition of ours, our songs, our School history,
this part of the history of this country, were gone and finished and liquidated.
Very different is the mood today. Britain, other nations thought, had drawn a sponge
across her slate. But instead our country stood in the gap. There was no
flinching and no thought of giving in; and by what seemed almost a miracle to those
outside these Islands, though we ourselves never doubted it, we now find ourselves in a
position where I say that we can be sure that we have only to persevere to conquer."
(Winston Churchill, "To the Boys of Harrow School," 29 October 1941)
periodic sentence
Long and frequently involved sentence in which the
sense is not completed until the final word--usually with an emphatic climax. Marked
by suspended syntax. (Opposite of running style)
-"Hereupon, not thinking it strange, if whatsoever is human should befal me,
knowing how Providence overcomes grief, and discountenances crosses; and that, as we
should not despair in evils which may happen to us, we should not be too confident, nor
lean much to those goods we enjoy; I began to turn over in my remembrance all that could
afflict miserable mortality, and to forecast everything which could beget gloomy and sad
apprehensions, and with a mask of horror show itself to human eyes; till in the end, as by
unities and points mathematicians are brought to great numbers and huge greatness, after
many fantastical glances of the woes of mankind, and those incumbrances which follow upon
life, I was brought to think, and with amazement, on the last of human terrors, or (as one
termed it) the last of all dreadful and terrible evils, Death." (William
Drummond)
"Years and years ago, when I was a boy, when there were wolves in Wales, and
birds the color of red-flannel petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills, when we sang
and wallowed all night and day in caves that smelt like Sunday afternoons in damp front
farmhouse parlors, and we chased, with the jawbones of deacons, the English and the bears,
before the motor car, before the wheel, before the duchess-faced horse, when we rode the
daft and happy hills bareback, it snowed and it snowed."
(Dylan Thomas, A Child's Christmas in Wales)
persona
Voice or mask that author or speaker or performer puts
on for a particular purpose. Latin term (used by Cicero) for ethos.
[L. "mask"]
-"Woody Allen's on-screen persona is well known: a comical and brainy New
Yorker in nebbishy black glasses, nervous about sex, death and modern times."
-"According to those who knew him well, Hemingway was a sensitive, often shy man
whose enthusiasm for life was balanced by his ability to listen intently, quietly making
mental notes. That was not the Hemingway of the news stories. The media wanted
and encouraged a brawnier Hemingway, a two-fisted man whose life was fraught with dangers.
The author, a newspaper man by training, was complicit in this creation of a public
persona, a Hemingway that was not without factual basis, but also not the whole man.
Critics, especially, but the public as well, Hemingway hinted in his 1933 letter to
Perkins, were eager 'automatically' to 'label' Hemingway's characters as himself,
which helped establish the Hemingway persona, a media-created Hemingway that would shadow
-- and overshadow -- the man and writer."
(Michael Reynolds, "Hemingway in Our Times" New York Times, 11
July 1999)
personification
Investing abstractions or inanimate objects with human
qualities or abilities. Also known as prosopopoeia.
"Because I could not stop for Death--
He kindly stopped for me--
The Carriage held but just Ourselves--
And Immortality."
(Emily Dickinson, "Because I could not stop for death")
"And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window panes."
(T. S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock")
phatic communion
Nonreferential use of language for the purpose of
contact; ritualized formulas that prolong communication, attract the attention of the
listener, or sustain his or her attention. "Phatic
communication refers also to trivial and obvious exchanges about the weather and time,
made up of readymade sentences or foreseeable statements. These are redundant phrases
which, as it happens in the mythic narration, must not persuade with a logic argumentation
but only emphatically seduce the actors. Michel Maffesoli (1993) underlines the
tactile function of communication (tactile, to touch) to focus on the fact that
during a social interaction we can have moments in which what is important is to
metaphorically “touch” the other rather than transmitting or exchanging
information. Therefore this is a type of communication that establishes a contact without
transmitting a precise content, where the container is more important then the content."
(Federico Casalegno and Irene McAra McWilliam, "Communication Dynamics in
Technological Mediated Learning Environments." International Journal of
Instructional Technology and Distance Learning, Nov. 2004)
-"How ya doin'?" "Have a
nice day!" "What's your sign?"
-"i have torn
my heart out of my own body and
held it beating in my hands
to study it, to understand why
yet it will reveal nothing and just keeps on beating
stubbornly
even after being poked and squeezed rudely
even after i stomp on it.
my body seems to be more cooperative
lending me a sense of rhythm, of everyday life
when my mind acts like a scratched record.
i hide my blood wet hands when you call
and we talk about the weather."
(Laura Hartman, "talk about the weather" the 2river view,
Fall 2001)
pleonasm
Use of words to emphasize what is clear without them.
[Gk. "abounding"]
-"The most unkindest cut of all." (Shakespeare, Julius Caesar)
-"Let us gather together."
-"Ears pierced while you wait."
ploce
Repetition of a word with a new or specified sense, or
with pregnant reference to its special significance. (Also know as antanaclasis.)
[Gk. "weaving, plaiting"]
-"But thou art all my art, and dost advance
As high as learning my rude ignorance."
(Shakespeare, Sonnet 78)
-"We must all hang together or assuredly we shall all hang separately." (Benjamin
Franklin)
-"When you look good, we look good." (Vidal Sassoon ad)
-"When the going gets tough, the tough get going."
-"When we come to work, we come to work."
polyptoton
Repetition of words derived from the same root but
with different endings.
[pronounced "po-LIP-ti-tun"]
". . . love is not love
Which alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove . . ."
(Shakespeare, Sonnet 116)
"Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired." (Robert
Frost)
"A good ad should be like a good sermon: it must not only comfort the afflicted;
it also must afflict the comfortable." (Bernice Fitzgibbon)
polysyndeton
Style that employs a great many conjunctions (opposite
of asyndeton).
"We lived and laughed and loved and left." (James Joyce, Finnegans
Wake)
"He kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another
and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say
yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so
he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said
yes I will yes." (Molly Bloom in James Joyce's Ulysses)
"And she pushed St. Peter aside and took a keek in, and there was God-with a
plague in one hand and a war and a thunderbolt in the other and the Christ in glory with
the angels bowing, and a scraping and banging of harps and drums, ministers thick as a
swarm of blue-bottles, no sight of Jim [her husband] and no sight of Jesus, only
the Christ, and she wasn't impressed. And she said to St. Peter This is no place
for me and turned and went striding into the mists and across the fire-tipped clouds to
her home."
(Ma Cleghorn in Lewis Grassic Gibbon's Grey Granite)
prolepsis
(1) Foreseeing and forestalling objections in various
ways.
(2) Figurative device by which a future event is presumed to have already occurred.
[Gk. "preconception, anticipation"]
-"In 1963, Nobel
Prize-winning economist William Vickrey suggested that [automobile] insurance be included
in the purchase of tires. Anticipating the objection that this might lead people to drive
on bald tires, Vickrey said drivers should get credit for the remaining tread when they
turn in a tire. Andrew Tobias proposed a variation on this scheme in which insurance
would be included in the price of gasoline. That would have the added benefit of solving
the problem of uninsured motorists (roughly 28% of California drivers). As Tobias points
out, you can drive a car without insurance, but you can't drive it without gasoline."
(Ian Ayres and Barry Nalebuff, "Would You Buy Car Insurance bu the
Mile?" Forbes 2005)
-"Michael Moore continues his book [Dude, Where's My Country?] with
a dream he had one night which took him several years into the future. It is a time
when the world has run out of oil and the wars started by Bush have brought an end to
America as we know it. Moore is having a conversation with his granddaughter, who
wants to know how Americans could have been so blind to the truth and so wasteful."
proverb
Short, pithy statement of a general truth, one that condenses common experience into
memorable form. Also known as adage, maxim,
sententia.
-"Here's the rule for bargains: 'Do other
men, for they would do you.' That's the true business precept."
(Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit)
-"An influence ceases when the person receiving it becomes aware of it."
(Alain Resnais)
-"Time wounds all heels." (Jane Ace)
-"Try everything once except incest and folk-dancing." (Sir Thomas
Beecham)
-"When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber." (Sir
Winston Churchill)
-"One of my favorite philosophical tenets is that people will agree with you only
if they already agree with you. You do not change people's minds." (Frank
Zappa)
refutation
The part of a discourse wherein a rhetor anticipates opposing arguments and answers them.
-"There will be those who say
'Go slow.' Don't upset the status quo. No doubt we will hear this from
competitors who perceive that they have an advantage today and want regulation to protect
their advantage. Or we will hear from those who are behind in the race to compete and want
to slow down deployment for their own self interest. Or we will hear from those that just
want to resist changing the status quo for no other reason than change brings less
certainty than the status quo. They will resist change for that reason alone.
"So we may well hear from a whole chorus of
naysayers. And to all of them I have only one response: we cannot afford to wait.
We cannot afford to let the homes and schools and businesses throughout America
wait. Not when we have seen the future. We have seen what high capacity
broadband can do for education and for our economy. We must act today to create an
environment where all competitors have a fair shot at bringing high capacity bandwidth to
consumers -- especially residential consumers. And especially residential consumers in
rural and underserved areas."
(William E. Kennard, Chairman of the FCC, 27 July 1998)
rhetor 
Greek term for "orator." Anyone who composes discourse that is intended to
affect community thinking about
events.
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English 5730 is
taught by Dr. Richard Nordquist.
Armstrong Atlantic State University
Savannah, Georgia 31419
912-921-5991
e-mail: engl5730@lycos.com
15 Jan 2008