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Glossary of Rhetorical Terms

rhetoric to zeugma

rhetoric 
(1) The study and practice of effective communication.
(2) The art of persuasion.
(3) An insincere eloquence intended to win points and manipulate others.
"Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion." (Aristotle, Rhetoric)
"The duty and office of rhetoric is to apply reason to imagination for the better moving of the will." (Francis Bacon)
"Though he may be an acute logician who is no orator, he will never be a consummate orator who is no logician." (Campbell)
"Acting on another through words." (James Moffet)
[Gk. "I say"]
The three branches of rhetoric:
deliberative (legislative, to exhort or dissuade);
judicial (forensic, to accuse or defend);
epideictic (ceremonial, to commemorate or blame).
The five canons or offices of rhetoric:
inventio (or Gk. heuristics, invention);
dispositio (or Gk. taxis, arrangement);
elocutio (or Gk. lexis, style);
actio (or Gk. hypocrisis, delivery);
memoria (or Gk. mneme, memory).

rhetorical criticism
A collection of critical approaches or points of view united by a single general assumption that a communicator's intentional use of language or other symbols, a receiver's response, and the situation or context in which communication takes place all interact to change human thought, feelings, behavior, and action.  The triadic relation of speaker/writer, discourse/text, and environment (including the audience/reader) generates the diverse approaches available to rhetorical critics: some focus primarily on the discourse or text and its role in persuading an audience; some on the role of the communicator; some on the communication context; others on the audience itself.  Various ratios or combinations of focus produce a complex set of critical goals and methodologies.

rhetorical distance
Metaphor for the degree of physical and social distance created between a rhetor and an audience by creation of an ethos. 

rhetorical question
A figure wherein rhetors ask questions to which they and (presumably) the audience already know the answers.  A question asked merely for effect with no answer expected.  (The rhetorical question mark first appeared in the 1580s and was used at the end of a rhetorical question; however it died out of use in the 1600s.  It was the reverse of an ordinary question mark, so that instead of the main opening pointing back into the sentence, it opened away from it.)
-"How long, Catiline, will you abuse our patience?" (Cicero)
-"Was this ambition?" (Mark Antony in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar)
-"Hath not a Jew eyes?
Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions?
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?"
(Shylock in William Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice)
-"Says who?"
-"What's up, Doc?"

rhetorical situation
The context of a rhetorical act; minimally, made up of a rhetor, an issue, and an audience.  Put another way, a rhetorical situation occurs when a rhetor, audience, medium (such as text or speech) and a context converge to create a rhetorical act, such as an act of writing or speaking.  
Lloyd Bitzer states that rhetorical discourse occurs in response to a rhetorical situation.  Bitzer provides three constituent components that define and make-up the important elements of any rhetorical situation:
  1. Exigence: “ … an imperfection marked by urgency; it is a defect, an obstacle, something waiting to be done, a thing which is other than it should be” (7).  There are many different kinds of exigencies, but a rhetorical one exists when discourse can positively modify it.
  2. Audience: an “…audience consists only of those persons who are capable of being influenced by discourse and of being mediators of change” (7).
  3. A set of constraints: “…made up of persons, events, objects and relations which are parts of the situation because they have the power to constrain decision and action needed to modify the exigence” (8).
Once these three elements are recognized, Bitzer says rhetorical discourse can come into play, because without these three elements, which are the rhetorical situation, there is no need for change, but if there were need for change, there would be no audience to create change, and without an audience, there is no set of constraints.
[Bitzer, Lloyd. “The Rhetorical Situation.” Philosophy and Rhetoric 1 (1968): 1-14.]

rhetorician    
Someone who studies or practices or teaches the art of rhetoric.
-"The chief proponents of alankarprasthana [Bangla poetics] are Bhamaha, Vamana, Udbhata and Rudrata.  According to them, rhetoric is the root of poetry without which poetry is devoid of beauty. The word alankara derives from the Sanskrit word alam, meaning dress and ornamentation. These rhetoricians point out that, just as bracelets and earrings enhance the beauty of the female body, rhetorical devices, such as alliteration, simile, metaphor, add beauty to poetry.  Dandi agreed that rhetorical devices gave beauty to poetry.  Other rhetoricians suggested that the process of adding beauty was not imposed but intrinsic.  Vamana noted, 'saundaryam alankarah' (beauty is rhetoric), and added, 'kavyang grahyam alankarat' (rhetoric makes poetry acceptable and enjoyable)."  ("Bangla Poetics," Banglapedia, Asiatic Society of Bangladesh)

running style
Opposite of periodic, sentence style that appears to follow the mind as it worries a problem through.   Mimics the "rambling, associative syntax of conversation" (Richard Lanham, Analyzing Prose).
-"It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills.  I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them.  I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it." (Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep)
-"It's like I was making a prison break, you know.  And I'm heading for the wall, and I trip and I twist my ankle, and they throw the light on you, you know.  So, somehow I get through the crying and I keep running.  Then the cursing started.  She's firing at me from the guard tower: 'Son of a bang! Son of a boom!'  I get to the top of the wall, the front door.  I opened it up, I'm one foot away.  I took one last look around the penitentiary, and I jumped!" (George Costanza, describing his break-up to Jerry, in "The Ex-Girlfriend" episode of Seinfeld)

Senecan
Generally, a plain, direct, anti-Ciceronian prose style (associated with the Roman moralist Seneca) that developed in English in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. (See Attic.)

sign  (Magritte, "La Trahison des images")
Facts or events that usually or always accompany other facts or events.
-"The way an iguana bobs its head can tell a lot about what it's trying to say.   Generally, the head bobbing motion is a way iguanas let everyone and everything around them know that they are in charge and in a way, tells them that this is its territory and not theirs.  Males usually bob more than females, especially after they have become sexually mature.  Many females bob their heads as well, but usually not as often or as distintively as males.  A slow, up and down bobbing usually means that it is just letting you know that it knows you are there and it wants you to know that it's there.  This slow bobbing is very normal and common for male iguanas and should be expected.  A faster motion indicates that it may be agitated and could be a sign of aggression.  Another form of head bobbing is a rapid side to side motion, commonly called the shudder bob, that is usually a pretty good sign that it doesn't want to be messed with.  If the bobbing motion is very fast, moving side to side and up and down, this is usually a clear sign that the iguana is extremely irritated.  With larger iguanas, especially males, it's important to use extreme caution when it displays this kind of head bobbing."
(Green Iguana Society, 2005)

simile
A stated comparison (usually formed with like or as) between two fundamentally dissimilar things that have certain qualities in common.
-"He was like a cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow."
(George Eliot, Adam Bede)
-"The harpsichord sounds like two skeletons copulating on a corrugated tin roof."
(Sir Thomas Beecham)
-"Humanity, let us say, is like people packed in an automobile which is traveling downhill without lights at terrific speed and driven by a four-year-old child.  The signposts along the way are all marked 'Progress.'"
(Lord Dunsany)
-"He looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food."
(Raymond Chandler)
- "Why did I dream of you last night?
   Now morning is pushing back hair with grey light
   Memories strike home, like slaps in the face;
   Raised on elbow, I stare at the pale fog beyond the window.

   So many things I had thought forgotten
   Return to my mind with stranger pain: 
   Like letters that arrive addressed to someone
   Who left the house so many years ago."
(Philip Larkin, "Why Did I Dream of You Last Night?")
-"Pastor Mallory flung himself off the bell tower and plummeted like a gigantic bird with broken wings, splattering his brains like so much bird shit when he hit the street below."
(Mo Yan, Big Breasts and Wide Hips, 2005)
-"My memory is proglottidean, like the tapeworm, but unlike the tapeworm it has no head, it wanders in a maze, and any point may be the beginning or the end of its journey."
(Umberto Eco, "The Gorge," in The New Yorker, 7 March 2005)

simple sentence
A sentence with one independent clause and no other clauses.
"A really good detective never gets married."
(Raymond Chandler)
"Expect nothing.  Live frugally on surprise."
(Alice Walker)

situated ethos
Proof from character that depends on a rhetor's reputation in the relevant community.  Contrast with invented ethos.

sophist 
In ancient times, name given to any rhetor who taught by example; when capitalized, refers to any of a group of rhetoric teachers who worked in and around Athens in the fifth and fourth centuries BC.  Initially, a sophist was someone who gave sophia to his disciples, i. e. wisdom made from knowledge. It was a complimentary term, applied to such early philosophers as the Seven Wise Men of Greece.  Eventually, it came to refer to a school of philosophy whose practitioners taught the arts of debate and rhetoric. Protagoras is generally regarded as the first sophist.  Because of the value of these skills in the litigious social life of Athens, teachers of  effective argumentation often commanded high fees. The practice of taking fees, coupled with the willingness of many practitioners to use their rhetorical skills to pursue unjust lawsuits, eventually led to a decline in respect for this school of thought.  By the time of Plato, "sophist" had taken on negative connotations, usually referring to someone who used rhetorical sleight-of-hand and ambiguities of language in order to deceive, or to support fallacious reasoning. Thus, in modern English, a "sophist" is a generally disparaging term for a rhetor who may use fallacious or tricky arguments.

sprezzatura
The rehearsed spontaneity, the well-practiced naturalness, that lies at the center of convincing discourse of any sort.  Put another way, sprezzatura is the art of doing something so gracefully that it looks easy.   The Oxford English Dictionary defines the term as "Ease of manner, studied carelessness, nonchalance, esp. in art or literature."  Perhaps the best definition was given by Richard Seaver in his description of Jean-Paul Belmondo's performance in Alain Resnais' film, Stavisky: "Power in repose."    Sprezzatura was coined in 1528 by Baldesar Castiglione in The Book of the Courtier (Chapter I §26 ¶2): ". . . I have found quite a universal rule which in this matter seems to me valid above all others, and in all human affairs whether in word or deed: and that is to avoid affectation  in every way possible as though it were some very rough and dangerous reef; and (to pronounce a new word perhaps) to practice in all things a certain Sprezzatura [nonchalance], so as to conceal all art and make whatever is done or said appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it."  However, the concept (if not the term) was familiar to classical rhetoricians.  Quintilian, for instance, argued that an orator performing at a court of law should give "no hint of elaboration in the exordium, since any art that the orator may employ at this point seems to be directed solely at the judge."  Instead, he should conceal his eloquence, "avoid anything suggestive of artful design," and make everything "seem to spring from the case itself rather than the art of the orator."  The opposite of sprezzatura is affectazione (that is, affectation). 
[pronounced SPRETT-sa-toor-ah]
-"Float like a butterfly; sting like a bee." (Muhammed Ali)
-"Never let 'em see you sweat."
-"And all you got to do is act naturally." (Morrison and Russell, "Act Naturally")
-"Sincerity: if you can fake it, you've got it made."  (Daniel Schorr, news commentator)
-"In the presidential debates, everything that the candidates say will have been carefully rehearsed including the ad lib remarks. While the candidate may be good at thinking on his feet, he is not going to risk making a mistake on national TV, with millions watching him. . . . What a candidate has to do is to memorize the answers to a bunch of questions and know how to look sincere.  As a TV producer said, if you can fake sincerity, you've got it made. Only one presidential candidate has ever been a professional actor, but most have been very competent amateurs."   (columnist Molly Ivins, 1991)
-"Being prepared is the key to rehearsed spontaneity in public speaking. Before making a remark, pause and look up like you are searching for something to say. The audience will think you are creating the humor on the spot."  (Scott Friedmann, "Public Speaking: Laws of Humor"). 

style
Narrowly interpreted as those figures that ornament discourse; broadly, as representing a manifestation of the person speaking.  "The word is derived from the instrument stilus, of metal, wood, or ivory, by means of which, in classic times, letters and words were imprinted upon waxen tablets. By the transition of thought known as metonomy the word has been transferred from the object which makes the impression to the sentences which are impressed by it, and a mechanical observation has become an intellectual conception. To "turn the stylus" was to correct what had been written by the sharp end of the tool, by a judicious application of the blunt end, and this responds to that discipline and self-criticism upon which literary excellence depends. The energy of a deliberate writer would make a firm and full impression when he wielded the stylus. A scribe of rapid and fugitive habit would press more irregularly and produce a less consistent text. The varities of writing induced by these differences of temperament would reveal the nature of the writer, yet they would be attributed, and with justice, to the implement which immediately produced them. Thus it would be natural for anyone who examined several tablets of wax to say, "The writers of these inscriptions are revealed by their stylus"; in other words, the style or impression of the implement is the medium by which the temperament is transferred to the written speech" (Edmund Gosse, 11th Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica)  "From the point of view of style, it is impossible to change the diction to say exactly the same thing; for what the reader receives from a statement is not only what is said, but also certain connotations that affect the consciousness" (Harmon and Holman, 500).
Style is essential to rhetoric in that its guiding assumption is that the form or linguistic means in which something is communicated is as much part of the message as is the content (as MacLuhan has said, "the medium is the message").   All figures of speech fall within the domain of style.
-"Style is character. It is the quality of a man's emotion made apparent; then by inevitable extension, style is ethics, style is government." (Spinoza)

syllepsis (See zeugma.) 
A kind of ellipsis in which one word (usually a verb) is understood differently in relation to two or more other words, which it modifies or governs.
-"He lost the bet and his temper."
-"Bryant Gumbel's well-publicized memo ticked off the Today show's troubles-and other personalities on the top-rated show."
-"You held your breath and the door for me."  (Alanis Morrissette, "Head Over Feet")

syllogistic progression 
"Type of form in which, given certain things, certain other things must follow, the premises forcing the conclusion." (Kenneth Burke, Counter-Statement).  A syllogism is the name for deductive argument in logic.
Premise 1:  If A Then B
Premise 2:  Affirm A
Conclude B
The premises in an argument of this form will always lead to the conclusion. This will be the case even when the premises are not true:
P1 If a person has blue eyes, then she has a green nose..
P2 I have blue eyes.
C I have a green nose.
For any argument of this form, if the premises are true then the conclusion must be true.   When an argument is in this syllogistic form the premises will always lead to the conclusion, but the truthfulness of the premises will still be undetermined from an analysis of the argument form.  Arguments can also be shown to be bad if they don't properly use the form (by affirming B instead of A, for instance).  Technically, syllogism is a term used in science and dialectic (according to Aristotle) and rhetoric is concerned with the term enthymeme.
--"On Meet the Press, Bush handled questions about his service in the National Guard during Vietnam the same way.  Russert reminded Bush, 'The Boston Globe and the Associated Press have gone through some of their records and said there's no evidence that you reported to duty in Alabama during the summer and fall of 1972.' Bush replied, 'Yeah, they're just wrong. There may be no evidence, but I did report.  Otherwise, I wouldn't have been honorably discharged.'  That's the Bush syllogism: The evidence says one thing; the conclusion says another; therefore, the evidence is false."
(William Saletan, Slate, Feb. 2004)

synathroesmus
The piling up of adjectives, often in the spirit of invective. (pronounced "si na TREES mus")
[Gk. "collection"]
-"He's a proud, haughty, consequential, turned-up-nose peacock."
(Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby)
-"He was a gasping, wheezing, clutching, covetous old man."
(Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol)

synecdoche
Substitution of a less inclusive for a more inclusive term to describe something--or the other way around.   Most commonly, synechdoche involves the use of a part to represent the whole.  A form of metonymy.    (pronounced "si NEK doh kee")
[Gk. "receiving jointly"]
-"All hands on deck."
-"Take thy face hence." (Shakespeare, Macbeth V.iii)
-"I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas."
(T. S. Eliot's "the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock")
-"England won the soccer match."

tapinosis
Undignified language that debases a person or thing. (See meiosis.)
[Gk. "reduction, humiliation"]
"rhymester" for "poet"
-"Achilles? A drayman, a porter, a very camel!" (Shakespeare, Troilus & Cressida)

tenor  
The underlying idea or principal subject which is the meaning of a metaphor or figure.
(I. A. Richards, The Philosophy of Rhetoric) (See vehicle.)
-In the first stanza of Abraham Cowley's poem “The Wish,” the tenor is the city and the vehicle is a beehive:
"WELL then! I now do plainly see
         This busy world and I shall ne'er agree.
The very honey of all earthly joy
Does of all meats the soonest cloy;
         And they, methinks, deserve my pity
Who for it can endure the stings,
The crowd and buzz and murmurings,
         Of this great hive, the city."
(Abraham Cowley, "The Wish")

tetracolon climax  
Series of four members.
-"Out of its wild disorder comes order; from its rank smell rises the good aroma of courage and daring; out of its preliminary shabbiness comes
the final splendor.   And buried in the familiar boasts of  its advance agents lies the modesty of most of  its people."
(E. B. White, "The Ring of Time")
-"I do not believe in recovery. The past, with its pleasures, its rewards, its foolishness, its punishments, is there for each of us forever, and it should be."
(Lillian Hellman, Scoundrel Time)

testimony
A person's account of an event or state of affairs.
-"On August 6, 2001, over a month before 9/11, during the 'summer of threat,' President Bush received a Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB) at his Crawford, Texas ranch indicating that bin Laden might be planning to hijack commercial airliners. The memo was entitled 'Bin Laden Determined to Strike inside US,'  and the entire memo focused on the possibility of terrorist attacks inside the US.  In testimony before the 9/11 Commission, Condoleezza Rice, National Security Advisor to President Bush, stated to the commission that she and Bush considered the August 6th PDB as just an 'historical document' and  stated that it was not considered a 'warning.' "
(D. Lindley Young, The Modern Tribune, April 8, 2004)

topics
Both the stuff of which arguments are made and the form of those arguments. (See Aristotle's Rhetoric.)  Greek term for a commonplace--literally, the place where arguments are located.

tricolon 
Series of three members.
-"A happy life is one spent in learning, earning, and yearning."
(Lillian Gish)
-"Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned."
(Edna St. Vincent Millay, "Dirge Without Music")
-"Ours is the age of substitutes: instead of language, we have jargon; instead of principles, slogans; instead of genuine ideas, bright ideas."
(Eric Bentley, "The Dramatic Event")
-"A top al-Qa'ida suspect in Guantanamo Bay was stripped, forced to bark like a dog, and subjected to the music of Christina Aguilera."
(Rupert Cornwall, The Online Independent, 13 June 2005)

trope
Rhetorical device that produces a shift in the meaning of words-- traditionally contrasted with a scheme, which changes only the shape of a phrase.  Sixteenth-century rhetorician Peter Ramus identified four major tropes: metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony.  Post-Saussurean theorists have challenged such distinctions between the tropological and "literal" aspects of language, arguing that the rhetorical and metaphorical dimension of language is integral to all discourse, not just poetic and literary language.
[Gk. "a turn"]

understatement (Jim Davis, Garfield 2005)
Figure in which a rhetor deliberately makes a situation seem less important or serious than it is.
-"The grave's a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace."
(Andrew Marvell, "To His Coy Mistress")

vehicle
In a metaphor, the figure itself. A metaphor carries two ideas: the vehicle and the tenor, or underlying idea.
--In the first stanza of Abraham Cowley's poem “The Wish,” the tenor is the city and the vehicle is a beehive:
"WELL then! I now do plainly see
         This busy world and I shall ne'er agree.
The very honey of all earthly joy
Does of all meats the soonest cloy;
         And they, methinks, deserve my pity
Who for it can endure the stings,
The crowd and buzz and murmurings,
         Of this great hive, the city."
(Abraham Cowley, "The Wish")

voice
Often used synonymously with persona and ethos in a text.  Also, the persuasive use of loudness and tone of voice. 
-"‘Voice’ is first and always an aspect of self-constitution as a moral agent—that is, ‘voice’ bespeaks the ethos a rhetor constitutes in her or his text, whether speaking or writing.  Political forces at play in the culture both limit and incite the language and other social conventions available to the rhetor in this self-fashioning.  Access to education, the particular monarch on the throne, gender, examples that rhetoric books present--are all forces that move a particular rhetor, a particular body, to ‘voice’ discourse in one way or another.  Second, where the canon of delivery (including inflection or enunciation) is specifically at stake in rhetoric, the particular body still may only resonate with the pitches—with the notes of the scale, one might say—that her or his tradition allows." 
(Wendy Dasler Johnson, "Voice and Rhetoric in Early Modern American Texts of Anne Bradstreet," July 1999)

zeugma
Use of a word to modify or govern two or more words although its use is grammatically or logically correct with only one. (Corbett offers this distinction between zeugma and syllepsis: in zeugma, unlike syllepsis, the single word does not fit grammatically or idiomatically with one member of the pair. Thus, in Corbett's view, the first example below would be syllepsis, the second zeugma.)
[Gk. "a yoking"]
-"Here thou, great ANNA! whom three realms obey,
Dost sometimes counsel take--and sometimes tea."
(Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock)
-"He carried a strobe light and the responsibility for the lives of his men."
(Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried)

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Beckson, Karl, and Arthur Ganz. Literary Terms: A Dictionary, 3rd ed. New York, Farrar, 1989.

Corbett, Edward P. J. Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student. 4th ed. New York,
         Oxford UP, 1999.

Crowley, Sharon, and Debra Hawhee.  Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students, 2nd ed.
         Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1999.

Cuddon, J. A. A Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991.

Epsy, Willard R. The Garden of Eloquence: A Rhetorical Bestiary. New York: Harper, 1983.

Harmon, William, and C. Hugh Holman. A Handbook to Literature, 8th ed. Upper Saddle River:
         Prentice-Hall, 2000. 

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Hollander, John. Rhyme's Reason: A Guide to English Verse, 3rd ed. New Haven: Yale UP, 2001

Lanham, Richard A. Analyzing Prose, 2nd ed.  New York: Continuum, 2003.

----. A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms: A Guide for Students of English Literature. 2^nd ed. Berkeley:
        U of California P,  1991.

McArthur, Tom, ed. The Oxford Companion to the English Language. New York:
        Oxford UP, 1992.

Makaryk, Irena R., ed. Encyclopedia of Contemporary Literary Theory: Approaches, Scholars, Terms.
        Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1993.

Vickers, Brian. Classical Rhetoric in English Poetry. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1970.

Woodson, Linda. A Handbook of Modern Rhetorical Terms. Urbana: NCTE, 1979.


                                                                                                --R. F. Nordquist, November 2005

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