1. Rhetorical Devices in
Frederick Douglass

2. Exigence = The drive to speak
Birth of Logos
Logos = One’s reasoned argument
Exigence = The drive to speak
Purpose
Audience
Logos

3. Rhetoric We study rhetoric for two reasons:
Definition: the art of using words in speaking (or writing) to advance the author’s Logos so as to persuade or influence others
We study rhetoric for two reasons:
to perceive how oral and written language is at work
to become proficient in applying the resources of language in our own speech and writing

4. Rhetorical Devices
Definition: specific, identifiable language techniques used in rhetoric.
Two types of Rhetorical devices are
content-centered (what)
form-embedded (how) Speakers utilize form-embedded devices to emphasize content.

5. Content-Centered: Pathos
Appeal to emotion
e.g., empathy, compassion, outrage
Example:
“…after rolling up his sleeves, he commenced to lay on the heavy cowskin, and soon the warm, red blood (amid heart-rending shrieks from her, and horrid oaths from him) came dripping to the floor” (5).

6. Content-Centered: Ethos
Appeal to common values and community expectations.
Ethos reflects…
Ethical values and/or the character or spirit of a culture
shared assumptions of a people
universal components of the human experience
Example:
“I would sometimes say to them [the white boys who helped Douglass learn to read], I wish I could be as free as they would be when they got to be men. ‘You will be free as soon as you are twenty-one, but I am a slave for life! Have not I as good a right to be free as you have?’ ” (23).

7. Content-Centered: Irony
A contrast between what is expected to happen and what actually happens
The general characteristic of irony is to make something understood by expressing its opposite

8. Content-Centered: Irony
3 types of irony in literature:
Verbal: a writer or speaker says one thing and means something entirely different
Dramatic: a reader or audience perceives something that a character in the story does not know (R&J example—Juliet is not dead…)
Situational: a writer shows a discrepancy between the expected results of some action or situation and the actual results (Of Mice and Men example—friendship/murder)

9. Form-Embedded: Alliteration
Repetition of initial consonant sounds
Example:
“I nerved myself up again, and started on my way, through bogs, brier, barefoot and bareheaded, tearing my feet sometimes at nearly every step…” (40).

10. Form-Embedded: Assonance
Repetition of vowel sounds within a sentence or across several sentences
Example: How now brown cow? (Repetition of the vowel sound “ow”)

11. Form-Embedded: Repetition
Repeating of words and/or phrases throughout a passage or text for dramatic effect
Example:
“Work, work, work, was scarcely more the order of the day than of the night” (37-38).

12. Form-Embedded: Parallelism
Repetition of a grammatical pattern
Used to emphasize and link related ideas
Adds balance, rhythm, and clarity to the sentence
Example:
“He [Covey] was always under every tree, behind every stump, in every bush, and at every window, on the plantation” (36).

13. Form-Embedded: Antithesis
Establishes a clear, contrasting relationship between two ideas by joining them together, often in parallel structure
Example:
“The longest days were too short for him and the shortest nights were too long for him” (38).

14. Form-Embedded: Apostrophe
When a speaker addresses an absent person, an abstract quality, or something non-human as if it were present and capable of responding
Example:
“My thoughts would compel utterance; and there, with no audience but the Almighty, I would pour out my soul’s complaint, in my rude way, with an apostrophe to the moving multitude of ship: -- ‘You are loosed from your moorings, and are free…’ ” (38).

15. Form-Embedded: Allusion
A brief (usually indirect) reference to a person, place, or event, or to another literary work or passage
Example:
“In coming to a fixed determination to run away, we did more than Patrick Henry, when he resolved upon liberty or death” (51).
Patrick Henry: “I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” -from Speech in the Virginia Convention

16. Form-Embedded: Hyperbole
To utilize exaggerated language to call attention to the situation and/or to emphasize emotion
Examples: “I haven’t seen you in a century!” “That necklace must have cost you your life’s savings!”

17. Form-Embedded: Oxymoron
An expression in which two [or more] contradictory words are put together for dramatic effect
Examples: free slave; benevolent slave owner; oppressive freedom; benign dictatorship; cute ugliness
Note: An oxymoron can be clever or it can be an error in diction; the context makes all the difference.

18. Form-Embedded: Paradox
a contradictory statement which is nevertheless true or which reveals a truth
Example:
“It is a paradox that every dictator has climbed to power on the ladder of free speech. Immediately on attaining power each dictator has suppressed all free speech except his own.” Herbert Hoover

19. Form-Embedded: Compare/Contrast
To examine the similarities and differences between two (or more) people, places, objects, ideas, or situations. Often the similarities are established to set up and emphasize the differences.
Example:
“There were horses and men, cattle and women, pigs and children, all holding the same rank in the scale of being, and were all subjected to the same narrow examination” (27).

20. Form-Embedded: Figurative Language or Literary/Stylistic Devices
Simile: a comparison between two different things using “like” or “as”
Metaphor: a direct comparison between two unlike things. Unlike a simile or analogy, metaphor asserts that one thing is another thing.

21. Form-Embedded: Figurative Language or Literary/Stylistic Devices
Sensory details/imagery: images and details that emphasize or appeal to the five senses (touch, taste, sight, smell, sound)
Personification: the act of giving human qualities to a nonhuman thing.

22. Form-Embedded: Figurative Language or Literary/Stylistic Devices
Symbolism: any object, person, place or action that has a meaning in itself and that also stands for something larger than itself