A Basic List of Some Useful Rhetorical Figures
Frank Coffman
Professor of English, Creative Writing, and Journalism (retired)
Rock Valley College, Rockford, Illinois
Rhetorical Figures are recognizable and distinctive patterns of figurative [non-literal] suggestion, or [literal] verbal sentence structure, syntax, or sound. They are not mere embellishments or ornaments of style. Rhetorical figures serve to enhance clarity of communication, to assist in ease of understanding, to help in the writer in both organization and invention, and to add impact to language. There are two main types of figures: Tropes and Schemes.
Tropes are “figurative language” in the usual sense. They are not meant to be interpreted literally, but, rather to offer suggestions of association or similarity or interesting indirect statement.
Schemes are distinctive patterns or arrangements of language, but they are literal rather than figurative; they do not change the meaning of words, they simply arrange words in interesting and impactful patterns.
Some Useful Tropes
You have likely encountered some of the tropes before in your study of either poetry or literature in the broader sense, possibly in your courses in composition or rhetoric, although the teaching Style has diminished in recent decades, and these figures are ways of improving and making distinctive and memorable the style, the delivery, the eloquence of expression.
Simile [relate to our word ‘similar’] — a comparison showing the similarities or differences (the negative simile) between two things, using the connective words “like,” “as,” “than,” or “so.” Examples: “He is as strong as a bull.” “She is graceful as a gazelle.” “His wit is keener than a razor’s edge.” “He is not as handsome as Adonis.” (negative simile). A long, elaborated simile with much detail is often called an Homeric Simile, after the great poet’s frequent use of them in The Iliad and The Odyssey.
Metaphor [Greek: “beyond the statement”] — a comparison saying or implying that one thing IS or IS NOT (negative metaphor) another. Examples: “He is a great bull of a man.” “She is a gazelle.” “His razor wit slices through almost every problem quickly.” “He is no Adonis.” (negative metaphor)
Personification — a special metaphor in which something inanimate is given human qualities. Examples: “The sun smiled down upon us.” “The sky was weeping as we departed.” A lesser degree of this is Animation, giving living qualities to the inanimate. Example: “The wind howled.” “It was a biting wind.”
Analogy — an extended comparison along several points of comparison. Example: “No man is an island, entire of itself; each man is a piece of the continent a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less……. Every man’s death diminishes me, because I am involvedin mankind.
Therefore never send to ask for whom the bell tolls — it tolls for thee.” — John Donne,
Meditation XVII
Metonymy — a figure of association; something associated with the word implied is used in place of the word. Examples: “The press corps is waiting for word from The White House.” [It will be a long time before the White Houses “says” anything — obviously what is intended is “the President,” or “the Executive Branch”] “Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears.” [Shakespeare’s Anthony is not actually requesting their ears but their attention. In effect, Anthony is saying “Hear me!” “Listen to me!”]
Synecdoche — occurs when the part is used for the whole, or the whole the part. Examples: “All hands on deck!” “He is our hired hand.” “I see some new faces in the crowd.” [part for the whole]. “Chicago is the current NBA champion.” [whole (city) for the part (a few professional basketball players who happened to be employed by the Chicago Bulls organization for the past NBA season)].
Oxymoron [Greek: “sharp dull”] — a bumping together of two words or parts of a word that seem not to belong together. Examples: “jumbo shrimp” “bittersweet” “deafening silence” “terrible beauty”.
Pun — a play on words, making use of intentional ambiguity. Examples: “If you break an egg, the yoke’s on you” — sorry, that wasn’t very “punny” (the rhyming pun or “groaner”). But pun’s can be used seriously, as in Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “. . . take thy nighted colour off.” “Nay, mother, I am too much in the sun” — punning on “sun” as antithetical to “nighted,” but also “son” as the now stepson of the uncle he hates. OR “A little more than kin and less than kind.”
Synaesthesia [Greek: “blended, mixed, or confused senses”] — the confusion of two or more of the five senses, usually done by using an adjective referent to one sense in connection with a noun referent to another. Examples: “I love the green smell of the springtime.” “My, that’s a loud jacket you’re wearing!”
Paradox — is a seemingly impossible statement at first glance, but which, upon examination and reflection,has an element of truth. Examples: “It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.” (Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities) OR “. . . finds himself an exile in his own land………. (Dr. King, “I Have a Dream”)
Some Useful Schemes
It will be useful to subdivide the following list of schemes into three groups: schemes of sound effect,schemes of parallelism, and miscellaneous/or “other”.
Sound Effects
Alliteration — the noticeable repetition of initial sounds in words (literally, the repetition of “letters” at the beginnings of words, but “wrong” alliterates with “right” because of the “R” sound). Examples: “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.” “She sells sea shells by the sea shore.” (tongue twisters overdo alliteration). “Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation “ Lincoln does a much better job of it.
Consonance — the noticeable repetition of internal and terminal consonant sounds. Examples: “Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth…….. “ (The rolling “R’s” of the beginning of
the Gettysburg Address are a good example.) “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill . . . .” (from Kennedy’s inaugural — nice alliteration too).
Assonance — the noticeable repetition of vowel sounds, sometimes called “vowel rhyme.” Examples: “Fourscore and seven years ago our father brought forth on this continent a new nation……. “ (all of the solemn open “O” sounds echo as well). “waist high weeds hide a ‘For Sale’ sign” [country music lyric — long “A’s” and long “I’s” — also nice alliteration.]
Rhyme — occasionally and sparingly, full or true rhyme can be used in prose to good effect. Examples: “Fourscore . . .” “Does might make right?” Rhyme is the noticeable repetition of same or similar sound, so, in a sense, all of these figures are varieties of rhyme.
“Similance “[note: my coinage for the effect described — F. Coffman] — the noticeable repetition of similar and phonetically related sounds. s, sh, z, zh are all related, for example, as are f and v, m and n, b and p, t and d, k and h, and others. Take, for example the following passage from Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) from Life on the Mississippi:
… where the ruddy flush was faintest was a smooth spot that was covered with graceful circles and radiating lines, ever so delicately traced; the shore on our leftwas densely wooded, and the somber shadow that fell from this forest wasbroken in one place by a long, ruffled trail that shone like silver . . .
Listen to all the soft and smooth and flowing sounds of this passage in your “mind’s ear.” The sounds are all what linguists call “liquids” or “sibilants”: flowing Fs, lively Vs, smooth Ss, lulling Ls, rolling Rs. Twain captures the sounds of the sunset river as well as the verbal sense of his description. He fits the sound of language to its sense, the music of language to its meaning. This is what poets do.
Schemes of Parallelism
On the pattern of 2:
Antithesis [Greek: “against the statement”] — is the balance of two opposing elements of approximately the same rhetorical structure: Example: “Had you rather that Caesar were living and die all slaves, or that Caesar were dead and live free men” (Brutus in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar).
Paraphrasis [Greek: “alongside the statement”] — is an immediate rephrasing of a statement. Example: “It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us…… “ (Lincoln, “The Gettysburg Address”).
Repetitio [Latin: “repetition”] — is the exact repetition of a statement for emphasis. Example: “This is the last great land of freedom in the whole world. Help me, help me, help me save it.” (Wendell Wilkie, from a campaign speech against FDR).
Balance — is the same thing said about a different subject. Example: “When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept.” (Anthony in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar) Also a good example of the device of Elegant Variation for effect (cried/wept), an avoidance of repeating the same word too often.
On the pattern of 3:
Tricolon [Greek: “three clauses”/”three groups of words in parallel”] — is a three-part parallel structure. Example: “Veni, Vidi, Vici” [“I came, I saw, I conquered.”] (from Caesar’s Commentaries on the Gallic Wars). [Digressive Note: This was 500 or so year old stuff when Caesar was a schoolboy. The Rhetorical Figures were all named by the early Greek rhetoricians as long ago as the 500’s BC.]
Abe Lincoln was in love with the tricolon. It was clearly the favorite structural and inventive device in his very direct and mainly literal style. Examples: “of the people, by the people, for the people” “we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground” (both from Gettysburg) “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on . . . .” (Second Inaugural Address). Three marks the beginning of the true “series” of things.
Of course, there are the mystical connections of the number 3 and all sorts of trinities of things in many cultures. Beginning, Middle, End / Birth, Life, Death / etc.
On the pattern of 4:
Tetracolon [Greek: “four clauses/groups of words”] — is a four-part parallel structure. Example:
“ — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion;
that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain;
that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and
that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
— Lincoln, the conclusion of “The Gettysburg Address”
On the pattern of 5:
Pentacolon [Greek: “five clauses/groups of words”] — is a five-part parallel structure. A good example is from John Kennedy’s “Inaugural Address”:
Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we will pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, defend any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty.
Nice alliteration too, huh? Kennedy liked to do his alliteration in pairs of words.] This is also a good example of (Isocolon [Greek: “equal clauses/groups of words”] — the repetition of exactly matched parallel elements) in that each of the five elements of the pentacolon fits the pattern “(verb) any (noun).”
The repeated beginnings:
Anaphora [Greek: “the first phrase/word/group of words”] — is the repetition of introductoryelements. The first word or phrase of successive structural elements is repeated. “We cannont dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow . . .) [also isocolon here].
The repeated ending:
Epiphora (also called Epinaphora) [Greek: “the last phrase/word/group of words”] — is the repetition of ending elements. The last word of phrase of successive structural elements is repeated. “. . . of the people, by the people, for the people.”
Miscellaneous “Other” Schemes:
Asyndeton [Greek: “no conjunctions”] — is the omission of conjunctions between elements in a series, including the last two. Example: “All the grace, the beauty, the poetry, had gone out of the majestic river!” (Twain, from Life on the Mississippi).
Polysyndeton [Greek: “many conjunctions”] — is the inclusion of conjunctions between all elements of a series. Example (also from Twain, same source): “But as I have said, a day came when I began to cease from noting the glories and the charms which the moon and the sun and the twilight wrought upon the river’s face…… “
Prosyndeton [Greek: “beginning conjunction” — again, my coinage (F. Coffman)] — Starting a sentence with a conjunction (And, But, So, Yet, etc.). No matter what your grade school teacher told you about never doing that, there’s no problem if you do it sparingly and with good reason. What you were taught is a “training-wheels rule” for the beginning writer. Note Lincoln’s beginning for paragraph three of “The Gettysburg Address”:
“But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground…”
Chiasmus [Greek: “X-pattern” or “X-like” the Greeks call the letterform X “chi”] — is the crossing of elements in successive clauses. A famous example of this important figure is Kennedy’s famous: “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” Or in the same speech: “Let us not negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.” [It was one of Kennedy’s favorite figures.] There is great memory [mnemonic] power in the chiasmus. Other examples: When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” “Plan your work, then work your plan.” “Say what you mean, and mean what you say.” (common sayings) / “You don’t have to spend your life savings to get a car that could save your life.” (car commercial) / “We didn’t land on Plymouth Rock. Plymouth Rock landed on us!” (Malcolm X).
Polyptoton [Greek: “multiple occurrences”] — is the use of two or more words derived from the same root in the same sentence. Examples: “They gave their lives that that nation might live.”(Lincoln, “Gettysburg”) AND “these dead shall not have died in vain.” (ditto).
Paradox — a seemingly self-contradictory statement or pair of statements. Usually, the statement cannot literally be possible. But upon thinking it over, there is a sense of reasonableness to it.
Examples: Charles Dickens intro sentences to A Tale of Two Cities:
“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.”
or Dr. King’s statement in his “I Have a Dream” Speech:
“…”The negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land.”
Absolute — a grammatical omission of an understood verb that, thus, needs no repeating [a device frequently used in Latin]: “Jim runs fast, Bill faster, Sue fastest of all.” “Runs” doesn’t need to be repeated. Or in the following passage by Will Strunk, Jr. in The Elements of Style:
“Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should have no unnecessary words for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines or a machine no unnecessary parts…” [the words “should have” don’t need to be repeated with the reference to the machine — the verbal element is understood].
Erotema [Rhetorical Question] — Is a question asked for rhetorical effect, really having the weight of a strong statement: “Can we allow these oppressive policies to continue?” means pretty much: “We can’t allow these oppressive policies to continue.”
“Prosyndeton” — [my coinage for the use of a conjunction to begin a sentence] Even though you were likely taught never to begin a sentence with a conjunction, it’s perfectly fine in many cases.
