I couldn’t help but grimace when someone denigrates rhetoric as if it were some shameful thing, like dirty laundry not to be seen in public. Everybody does it quite often, like the store clerk who, when you haggle prices to rock bottom, grimaces and gently tells you,
“Si ma’am naman, o!” (“Oh, ma’am!”) rather than calling you cheapskate. Also a rhetor—albeit a combative one—is the attractive woman you accost in the street who shrugs you off with a petulant “What do you think I am?” instead of berating you with “You’re mistaken if you think I’m a prostitute!”
The beauty about rhetoric is that you don’t need a Ph.D. in English or a Baccalaureate in Law to engage in it. It just happens to be a most natural way for people with small or minor grievances to get them off their chests. When a jeepney driver laments,
“Sa araw ang hirap, sa gabi ang sarap” (“Hardship at day, pleasure at night”), he’s doing sexual wordplay to relieve the tedium of work for at least a fleeting moment. The associations waiting in ambush behind such rhetorical constructs aren’t as sophisticated as those of intellectuals or seasoned politicians, but they could delight speaker and listener just the same.
IMAGE CREDIT: SLIDESHARE.NETSimple rhetoric devices involve at least five major mechanical language devices: (1) repetition; (2) serial enumeration; (3) cumulation; (4) allusion; and (5) rhetorical questions.
Repetition. Successful public speakers reinforce their arguments through repetition of key words and phrases, and modern-day advertising relies on the same strategy to sell products, services, and ideas. Take Winston Churchill’s masterly use of repetition in his famous World War II speech: “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind… You ask, what is our policy? I say it is to wage war by land, sea, and air…You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word. It is victory. Victory at all costs—victory in spite of all error—victory, however long and hard the road may be, for without victory there is no survival.”
Enumeration. Experienced speakers routinely use the common enumerative and transitional devices for separating ideas as well as for linking them, such as “to begin with,” “in the second place,” “however,” “nevertheless,” “another point,” and “to sum up.” This helps listeners follow their arguments sequentially and remember them better.
Cumulation. This involves successively adding for impact one word or phrase to another of the same type or structure, as in Julius Caesar’s famous tricolon, “I came, I saw, I conquered.” This produces a cadence and sweep rarely achieved when the ideas are stated separately.
Allusion. This classic technique buttresses one’s arguments with passing references to prominent people both in history and in the popular culture, as someone writing about the value of freedom might quote the American patriot Patrick Henry, “Give me liberty or give me death.”
Rhetorical questions. These are questions asked for which we expect no answer, but which we assume the listener will agree with. It’s the easiest, most common, and most vexing rhetorical device of all. A mother admonishing a child: “Do you want to stay outside and be eaten alive by the mosquitoes?” A military general in plainclothes in a traffic altercation: “Don’t you know who you’re talking to?”
Grammatical or literary finesse is a nice thing to have in rhetoric, but the latter’s purpose is actually practical and selfish: to give the rhetor the power to command immediate attention and control of the situation. It’s the ultimate means for democratic persuasion, designed to bring about a change in the attitude and behavior of the listener without doing physical violence on him or her.
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This essay, 2076th of the series, appeared in the column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in the Campus Press section of the December 16, 2021 Internet edition of The Manila Times,
© 2021 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved. It is a condensed version of an 821-word exposition entitled "Some simple rhetorical devices" that first appeared in the author's “English Plain and Simple” column in The Manila Times
and that later formed part of his book English Plain and Simple: No-Nonsense Ways to Learn Today's Global Language
(Manila Times Publishing Corp., first edition 2004, and second updated edition 2008). All rights reserved.Read this article online in
The Manila Times:
Using five simple rhetorical devices(Next:
Tropes and schemes as deeper rhetorical devices) December 23, 2021
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