Rhetorical Devices

What is Rhetorical Devices?

Within English, which covers grammar, vocabulary, reading, writing, poetry, drama and the skills for clear communication, this topic explains Rhetorical Devices. English topics help you read closely and write with purpose, so each one here explains a skill and shows how it works in a model text.

Check that you can explain Rhetorical Devices in your own words and give one example from everyday life. If you can do that, you have understood the core idea.

Understanding Rhetorical Devices helps you read texts more closely and write with more control, which earns marks in both reading and writing papers.

Rhetorical Devices in detail

Rhetorical devices are techniques used to persuade or impress an audience. They include rhetorical questions (which do not need an answer), repetition (anaphora), the rule of three (tricolon), parallelism, antithesis (contrasting ideas, such as "ask not what your country can do for you..."), direct address, emotive language and hyperbole.

Aristotle described three appeals: ethos (credibility), pathos (emotion) and logos (logic). Speakers such as Churchill and Martin Luther King used these to great effect. When analysing, identify the device, quote it and explain its effect on the audience. You can use them in your own speeches and persuasive writing.

How the interactive helps you understand Rhetorical Devices

Click a card to flip it and reveal the answer, then move on to the next one.

Before you change anything, predict the result. Then change one value at a time and check whether your prediction was right. This is a quick way to build a correct mental model of Rhetorical Devices.

Real-life uses and examples

• Use Rhetorical Devices to make your own writing more precise and vivid.
• Support a point about Rhetorical Devices with a short, accurate quotation.
• Plan an essay paragraph by linking the technique to the reader’s response.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Quoting a long passage instead of picking a short, precise phrase.
• Naming a technique without explaining its effect on the reader.
• Learning the definition without testing it. Use the quiz and the interactive to check that you can apply the idea.