Rhetorical Question
Education used to be known—colloquially, at least—as the Three Rs (readin’, ‘riting, and ‘rithmatic). For writers, at least, we can dispense with ‘rithmatic—unless we’re composers of haiku, our only use for ‘rithmatic is getting a word count. And Microsoft Word does that for us, automatically. However, there is another R that should take its place in the Three Rs: rhetoric.
Is rhetoric even taught anymore?
That’s a rhetorical question. I already know the answer (it’s a backhanded way of stating the negative answer right within the question). There’s no reason you should be expected to answer a rhetorical question.
On the other hand, why isn’t rhetoric being taught? These days, if you even encounter the word “rhetoric,” you’ll only find it paired, in adjectival form, with “question.” Most people don’t even know the word has ever had any other uses.
As writers, or orators, we want to get our message across as effectively as possible. If there was a set of tools—like figures of speech—that already exist, that could add emphasis, clarity, and a soupçon of panache to our words, and are free for the taking, wouldn’t we want to use them? Where could we find such handy items?
In the study of rhetoric.
Some rhetorical figures are well-known. Puns, for example, are universally loved and/or despised—often at the same time. But they immediately grab a reader’s or listeners’s attention. Without their salt, the writer’s dish can seem tasteless. Some might argue that writing that includes puns is, by its very nature, tasteless. (“Salt,” by the way, is Synecdoche—it uses one part of something, in this case the entire range of rhetorical “seasonings” to stand for the whole.)
De gustibus non est disputandum, if you catch my drift.
Oxymoron uses opposites to make a point. “Deafening silence” is an oxymoron. In “the silence was deafening,” the contrasting words are not together, making it an example of Antithesis. Like puns, these devices make the reader stop for a second to parse the meaning of the seemingly meaningless combination of words.
Metaphors and similes, instead, compare similarities things to explain something that might not be obvious. “The heart is a lonely hunter” and “my luve is like a red, red rose” both use allusions to other things… but similes are less forceful because they use “like,” which steals some of the expression’s thunder. “Thunder,” by the way, is both metaphor and exaggeration (more on this, below) since the sentence doesn’t actually have any meteorological content.
Metonymy is similar to the above, but treats objects as symbols for concepts. “Heavy is the head that wears the crown” is not intended literally—”the crown” stands for the office and the metaphorical “weight” of its responsibilities.
Personification treats concepts as if they were, or could behave as if they were human. “Death takes a holiday” is an example. Apostrophe is similar, but the concept or object is spoken to directly, as if it were human. “O death, where is thy sting?” Die, macabre paragraph, you’ve out-lived your usefulness. (see that? an apostrophe that—for once—is not misplaced)
Hyperbole employs exaggeration to make its point. “That comedian literally killed me” is not only factually false, nothing about it is literal. There’s an element of Irony in that (which, as you might guess, is another rhetorical figure of speech). “All the world’s a stage” is hyperbolic, but it’s also metaphorical. What tangled webs we weave…
In Alliteration, writers rightly or wrongly reap resonance by repeating the intitial sound of a series of words. The words don’t have to begin with the same letter. Alliteration doesn’t care that “wrongly” and “writer” don’t begin with “R.” (and yes, “alliteration,” here, is unrepentant personification)
You may find this hard to believe, but there are even more figures of speech drifting about in the rhetorical universe. More literary devices distinguished from each other by ever finer, and more pedantically specific, marks of distinction. I don’t remember its name, but I vaguely recall there’s even one that inserts amplification inside another word.
“Unfuckingbelievable, right?’
And, with that last rhetorical question, I’ll drop a relieved curtain on this serious farce.
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