In days gone by, it was common to study oratory and rhetoric. The goal was to equip oneself with the ability to articulate a point of view, support it elegantly with logic, and to defend it against attack by others. To communicate, in a word, effectively. Excellent communication encourages, demands even, clarity of thought.
With time, experts in rhetoric came to recognize a large body of tried-and-true rhetorical techniques as particularly useful to the speaker. Some pleased the ear, like alliteration, and consequently pleased audiences. Never a bad idea when trying to convince someone of something.
Other techniques derived their impact through their function in building an argument. Hypophora is a means to anticipate an opponent’s argument and counter it before they have the opportunity to marshal it against you. No matter how cogent the argument is, you can diminish its power by introducing it first and waving it away.
Still other techniques were simply practical techniques to help the audience follow one’s line of thought. Anaphora, for example, is the repetition of a word or phrase in successive sentences or clauses, and the practice leads an audience to better remember exactly what the speaker intends most to stick in their mind.
But then it got weird.
Rhetoricians and teachers began to make ever finer distinctions between this or that technique. Zeugma is the joining together of ideas through the use of a single word or phrase. But what if the word has different semantic meanings? Oh! then it's called syllepsis!
Fashion takes its toll in oratory as it does everywhere. Different techniques fall out of favor only to return. What follows is a list of some of the more common techniques to survive or that wax and wane in popular taste. They may not all be in the ascendant at the moment, but give it time.
We’re including them here because they contribute so much to dialogue. Do too many of your characters sound like you? Try giving one a habit for one or more of the following techniques and see what variety does for characterization.
Repetition of a consonant sound at the beginning of a word within a narrow set of words or phrases.
Alliteration Example
maggie and milly and molly and may
— e.e. cummings
A syntactical break in a sentence often indicating a change of thought or self-interruption.
Anacolouthon Example
I will have such revenges on you both,
That the world shall—I will do such things,
What they are I know not."
— King Lear, William Shakespeare
Repetition of the beginning word or phrase in a series of successive clauses or sentences.
Anaphora Example
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness...
— A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
The repetition of a word within a sentence or series, often where the meanings are different or in juxtaposition with one another. Syllepsis when it occurs in the same sentence.
Antanaclasis Example
We must all hang together or most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.
— Benjamin Franklin
An ironic or humorous use of a word or phrase that implies its opposite.
Antiphrasis Example
And Brutus is an honorable man.
— Julius Caesar, William Shakespeare
The raising of an issue by claiming not to mention it.
Apophasis Example
We don't talk about Bruno.
— Encanto, Lin-Manuel Miranda
An expression of real or pretended doubt meant for rhetorical effect.
Aporia Example
I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.
— Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 US 184 (1964), J. Potter Stewart, concurring
The omission of a conjunction in a series of words, phrases, or clauses.
Asyndeton Example
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground.
— The Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln
Discordant or incoherent sounds suggesting chaos or other confusion.
Cacophony Example
All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick.
— Moby Dick, Herman Melville
An inversion in the relationship between successive words or syntactical elements in successive phrases or sentences.
Chiasmus Example
The mind is its own place and, in itself can make a heaven of hell or a hell of heaven.
— Paradise Lost, John Milton
The substitution of a distasteful or offensive expression for an expression that is inoffensive.
Dysphemism Example
Intoxicated? The word did not express it by a mile. He was oiled, boiled, fried, plastered, whiffled, sozzled, and blotto.
— Meet Mr. Mulliner, P.G. Wodehouse
The repetition of words or phrases in a series of successive phrases or sentences.
Epistrophe Example
...[A]nd that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
— The Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln
The joining of two words or phrases in immediate succession. But for position, similar to anaphora and epistrophe.
Epizeuxis Example
He went down, down, down, and the devil called him by name.
— Down, Down, Down, Tom Waits
A transferred epithet, which is to say the use of a modifier to describe one thing when it were better used to describe another.
Hypallage Example
Keep a light, hopeful heart. But expect the worst.
— Joyce Carol Oates
A transposition or inversion of idiomatic word order.
Hyperbaton Example
When 900 years old you reach, look as good you will not.
— Yoda
Exaggeration, usually forced.
Hyperbole Example
I was quaking from head to foot, and could have hung my hat on my eyes, they stuck out so far.
— Old Times on the Mississippi, Mark Twain
To ask and then answer a question.
Hypophora Example
How Long? Not long, because no lie can live forever.
— Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Understatement expressing an affirmative sentiment by use of its negative opposite. It carries a high risk of being trite.
Litotes Example
Let me not then die ingloriously and without a struggle, but let me first do some great thing that shall be told among men hereafter.
— Iliad, Homer
Understatement, usually a strong one, meant to achieve a heightened effect.
Meiosis Example
The violent conflict in Northern Ireland from about 1968 to 1998 is commonly referred to as the Troubles.
An analogy that substitutes one idea for another to express something unique or interesting about it.
Metaphor Example
Whitepeople believed that whatever the manners, under every dark skin was a jungle.
— Beloved, Toni Morrison
A substitution of a word or idea to communicate succinctly a more complex thing.
Metonymy Example
The pen is mightier than the sword.
— Richelieu, Edward Bulwer-Lytton
A word composed to imitate the sounds of that which it represents.
Onomatopoeia Example
Well, o'course it was nailed there! If I hadn't nailed that bird down, it would have nuzzled up to those bars, bent 'em apart with its beak, and VOOM!
— The Dead Parrot Sketch, Monty Python
The combination of words or phrases with contradictory meanings.
Oxymoron Example
...[A]s we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know.
— Donald Rumsfeld
The use of more words than necessary to communicate an idea.
Pleonasm Example
Their Eyes Were Watching God
— Zora Neale Hurston
An analogy that draws a comparison between two or more things that uses the words like or as.
Polysyndeton Example
It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
— Ulysses, Alfred, Lord Tennyson
An analogy that draws a comparison between two or more things that uses the words like or as.
Simile Example
The music rose like marching souls toward the vaulted ceiling.
— Meridian, Alice Walker
Basically a special case of zeugma. The use of one word to modify two or more ideas, but the modifier is used with different senses.
Syllepsis Example
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
— Groucho Marx
The use of a part to describe a whole or vice versa, or to use a subset to describe the category to which it belongs or vice versa.
Synechdoche Example
Oh take this longing from my tongue,
whatever useless things these hands have done.
— Take This Longing, Leonard Cohen
The use of one word to modify two or more ideas, usually relying on the same meaning of the modifier.
Zeugma Example
We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
— John F. Kennedy