Rhetorical devices with examples

Naming is not analysis

The single most common failure in writing about rhetoric: identifying a device and stopping. 'The speaker uses hyperbole here' is a label, not an argument.

The analysis is what the device does. Why this device, in this place, on this audience, and what would be lost without it.

'The exaggeration of the figure — a hundredfold increase where the data show a doubling — is not carelessness but calibration: it converts a statistical claim into a moral one, which is the register the rest of the speech operates in.' That is analysis, and it happens to name the device in passing.

So learn the names to be able to say what you noticed, and spend the words on the effect.

Devices of repetition

Repetition is the most common rhetorical resource and the easiest to spot. What varies is what is repeated and where.

Devices of comparison

Metaphor states that one thing is another: 'the argument collapsed'. Simile says it is like another: 'the argument collapsed like a badly built wall'.

Analogy extends a comparison to explain something unfamiliar by mapping it onto something familiar, and it is the workhorse of scientific and policy communication.

Personification gives human qualities to something non-human: 'the market panicked', 'the data suggest'. Note that the second is so conventional in academic writing that it no longer reads as a device at all.

Metonymy substitutes an associated thing for the thing itself — 'the Crown', 'Westminster', 'the bench' — and synecdoche substitutes a part for a whole.

The analytical question for all of these: what does the comparison import? A metaphor carries its source domain's associations with it, and identifying what those are is the substance of the analysis.

Devices of exaggeration and understatement

Hyperbole is deliberate exaggeration for effect, not for deception: 'I have told you a thousand times'. The audience is expected to know it is not literal.

Litotes is understatement through negation: 'not unimpressive', 'no small achievement'. It is common in British academic writing and functions as a hedge with an edge.

Meiosis is understatement by using a diminishing term: calling a serious accident 'a bit of a bump'.

The analytical point about all three is the gap between the statement and the reality, and what the speaker gains by making the audience measure it.

In academic writing itself, hyperbole is a fault rather than a device. 'This study proves conclusively' overclaims, and markers read it as a failure of calibration.

Devices of structure and contrast

Antithesis places opposed ideas in parallel structure: 'not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more'. The parallelism is what makes the contrast land.

Chiasmus is a reversed parallel structure, and antimetabole is its exact-word version.

Parallelism itself — matching grammatical structures across clauses — is the underlying resource for most of these and is worth noticing in its own right.

Rhetorical questions ask without expecting an answer, and are the device most overused in student writing. In academic prose they usually postpone a claim you could simply make.

Anticipating and answering an objection is a rhetorical move as well as a logical one, and it is the one most worth transferring into your own writing.

Devices of sound

Alliteration repeats initial consonants; assonance repeats vowel sounds; consonance repeats consonants elsewhere in words.

Sibilance is alliteration of s sounds specifically, and is frequently noted in analysis because it is easy to hear.

The analytical trap here is strongest: sound devices occur constantly by accident in any language, and identifying alliteration in a phrase where it does nothing is the classic empty observation.

The test is whether the sound does something — slows the line, links two words the argument wants linked, creates an unpleasant effect that matches the content. If you cannot say what it does, it is coincidence.

The three appeals

Aristotle's framework, and still the most useful organising idea for rhetorical analysis.

Ethos appeals to the speaker's credibility: expertise, character, shared values. In academic writing, citation and methodological transparency are ethos moves.

Pathos appeals to the audience's emotions and values. It is not a synonym for manipulation; a description of a consequence is a pathos appeal and may be entirely accurate.

Logos appeals to reason: evidence, structure, logical connection. Academic writing is nominally all logos and in practice uses all three.

Kairos is the fourth term worth knowing: the appropriateness of the argument to its moment. An argument that would have persuaded nobody in 2019 may persuade in 2027 because circumstances changed.

Writing a rhetorical analysis

Organise by effect rather than by device. A paragraph on how a speech builds credibility, drawing on three devices, is analysis; three paragraphs each naming a device is a list.

Quote short and precisely. The words you are analysing should be in the sentence, not in a block above it.

Say what the alternative would have been. 'Repetition here does X' is stronger when you can say what a non-repetitive version would have lost.

Attend to the audience and the occasion. A device that works in a courtroom fails in a scientific paper, and the analysis is incomplete without saying who was being addressed and why.

Notice what is absent. A political speech with no pathos at all is doing something deliberate, and absence is as analysable as presence.

Using them in your own writing

Academic writing uses fewer of these than persuasive writing, and the ones it does use are structural rather than ornamental.

Worth using: parallelism, which makes lists and comparisons easier to read; tricolon, sparingly; antithesis where you are genuinely contrasting; and analogy where you are explaining something unfamiliar.

Worth avoiding: rhetorical questions, hyperbole, alliteration for its own sake, and any device that draws attention to the writing rather than to the argument.

The general rule: if a reader notices the device rather than the point, it has failed in academic prose. That is the opposite of the rule in a speech.

Where these come up in assessments

English literature and language, obviously, where rhetorical analysis is the assessment rather than a component of it.

Politics and history, analysing speeches, manifestos and propaganda. Here the analysis is usually about persuasion in a specific context, so kairos matters as much as the devices.

Media, marketing and communications, where advertising copy and campaign material are the objects and the audience question is central.

Law, where statutory interpretation and judicial rhetoric are both analysable, and where the persuasive structure of an advocate's argument is itself a taught skill.

Anything with a reflective or professional communication component, where you may be asked to analyse your own persuasive choices — which is harder than analysing someone else's and is where the effect question really bites.

The twenty, listed

For reference, grouped as above.

• Repetition: anaphora, epistrophe, tricolon, polysyndeton, asyndeton, antimetabole.
• Comparison: metaphor, simile, analogy, personification, metonymy, synecdoche.
• Degree: hyperbole, litotes, meiosis.
• Structure: antithesis, chiasmus, parallelism, rhetorical question.
• Sound: alliteration.