1. Speechwriting Techniques

2. Anaphora
anaphora – repetition of words at the beginning of neighboring sentences
Example:
“We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender.” – Winston Churchill

3. Repeating Key “Theme” Words Key words in Barack Obama’s first inaugural address. The bigger the word, the more often it was used.

4. Allusion
Allusion is a brief and indirect reference to a person, place, thing, or idea of historical, cultural, literary, or political significance. It does not describe in detail the person or thing to which it refers. It is just a passing comment and the writer expects the reader to possess enough knowledge to spot the allusion and grasp its importance in a text.

5. Examples of Allusion in Speeches
In his second inaugural address, Lincoln used the phrase, "but let us judge not, that we be not judged." This is an allusion to the words of Jesus in Matthew 7:1, which in the King James Version reads, "Judge not, that ye be not judged."
"And I can pledge our nation to a goal: When we see that wounded traveler on the road to Jericho, we will not pass to the other side." George Bush

6. Examples of Allusion in Everyday Life
•“Don’t act like a Romeo in front of her.” – “Romeo” is a reference to Shakespeare’s Romeo, a passionate lover of Juliet, in “Romeo and Juliet”.
•The rise in poverty will unlock the Pandora’s box of crimes. – This is an allusion to one of Greek mythology’s origin myths, “Pandora’s Box”.
•“This place is like a Garden of Eden.” – This is a biblical allusion to the “garden of God” in the Book of Genesis.
•“Hey! Guess who the new Newton of our school is?” – “Newton”, means a genius student, alludes to a famous scientist Isaac Newton.
You’re acting like such a Scrooge! - Alluding to Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, this line means that the person is being miserly and selfish, just like the character Scrooge from the story.

7. Simile and Metaphor
A simile is a figure of speech that makes a comparison, showing similarities between two different things. A simile draws resemblance with the help of the words “like” or “as”. Therefore, it is a direct comparison.
A metaphor is a figure of speech which makes an implicit, implied, or hidden comparison between two things that are unrelated but share some common characteristics. In other words, a resemblance of two contradictory or different objects is made based on a single or some common characteristics.

8. The Archbishop George Carey used a simile, which he developed during his eulogy at the funeral of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. “Like the sun, she bathed us in her warm glow. Now that the sun has set and the cool of the evening has come, some of the warmth we absorbed is flowing back to her.” In 1946, Winston Churchill used a metaphor when he referred to the separation of eastern and western Europe. “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.”

9. Parallelism
parallelism - the repeated use of similar grammatical structures.
Examples:
Good students learn to read, to question, and to respond.
“In the light of this equality, we know that the virtues most cherished by free people—love of truth, pride of work, devotion to country—all are treasures equally precious in the lives of the most humble and of the most exalted.”- D. Eisenhower

10. Pathos pathos – an appeal to emotion Example:
“Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live.” – A. Lincoln