Stylistic Devices & Language

Adding Some Zing

Remember from Before…Listener interestListener retentionAdapting to the audienceSensitivity to different identitiesAugmenting delivery

Language ChoicesLanguage’s power

In the beginning there was…Denotation vs. connotation (H. p.

265-268)Be appropriate to (H. 281-287):

ContextTopicAudience expectations and

identities For example, gender-inclusion

Speaker identity and ethics

Use Don’t (over)Use

AccurateClearSimple/ConciseFamiliarConcreteSpecific/PreciseSee Hogan 268-

275

Jargon“Scale”

Abbreviations/acronymsMMORPG

ClichésToo many cooks

in the kitchen… Modifiers

Likely, generally, sometimes

Stylistic Devices/Figures

Engages audience interestCrafts mental picturesIncreases persuasionMakes more memorableEmphasizes important

pointsCan combine devicesNo fear here – it’s NOT

awkward!

MetaphorDefinition: implied comparison

achieved through a figurative use of words; a word is used not in its literal sense, but in one analogous to it. The two things are of unlike nature yet have something in common.

Example: But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. -- Martin Luther King, Jr., “I Have a Dream”

Example: My heart is a lonely hunter that hunts on a lonely hill. -- William Sharp, The Lonely Hunter

Image from Dinosaur Comics, at Qwantz.com

Conceptual MetaphorsLife/Journey Going places Getting a head start Being at a crossroads

Violent Metaphors Shoot (meaning: talk) Dying to War on Poverty Shot down (love,

argument) Battle for Bombshell (for pretty) Cut like a knife Come charging in

Desire/Fire Burning with desire Warming up to

someone Looking hot

Memory is a crazy woman that hoards colored rags and throws away food. -- Austin O'Malley

Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come.  -- Matt Groening

Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player,That struts and frets his hour upon the stage. -- Shakespeare, Macbeth

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent. -- Winston Churchill

Metaphor Practice:

SimileDefined: A comparison between two

things that are not alike but have similarities. Unlike metaphors, similes employ like or as.

Example: He looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food. -- Raymond Chandler

Example: The harpsichord sounds like two skeletons copulating on a corrugated tin roof. -- Sir Thomas Beecham

Her eyes are as blue as a robin's egg. Let us go then, you and I,

While the evening is spread out against the sky,Like a patient etherized upon a table... -- T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Memories strike home, like slaps in the face;  Raised on elbow, I stare at the pale fog beyond the window.  So many things I had thought forgotten Return to my mind with stranger pain:   Like letters that arrive addressed to someone

 Who left the house so many years ago.-- Philip Larkin, Why Did I Dream of You Last Night?

Simile Practice

SynecdocheDefined: the use of a part for the

whole, or the whole for the partExample: Give us this day our

daily bread. -- Bible, Matthew 6 Example: England won three gold

medals.

Tom just bought a fancy new set of wheels.

I should have been a pair of ragged claws Scuttling across the floors of silent seas. -- T. S. Eliot's the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

All hands on deck.Take thy face hence. -- Shakespeare, Macbeth V.iii

Synecdoche Practice

SyllepsisDefined: use of a word with two

others, with each understood differently, applying the same single word to convey multiple meanings

Example: We must all hang together or assuredly we will all hang separately. -- Benjamin Franklin

Example: His boat and his dreams sank.

You held your breath and the door for me — Alanis Morissette

Fix the problem, not the blame. — Dave Weinbaum

He lost the bet and his temper.Bryant Gumble's well-publicized memo ticked off the Today show's troubles -- and other personalities on the top-rated show.

Syllepsis Practice

AlliterationDefined: repetition of the same

sound beginning several words in sequence.

Example: Calvin KleinExample: Best BuyExample: Let us go forth to lead the land we love. -- J. F. Kennedy, Inaugural

Veni, vidi, vici. -- Julius CaesarLady lounges luxuriouslyDark deep dreadFather is rather vulgar, my dear.  The word Papa, besides, gives a pretty form to the lips.  Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes, and prism, are all very good words for the lips: especially prunes and prism. -- Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit

Alliteration Practice

ChiasmusDefined: Repetition of words, in

successive clauses, in reverse grammatical order and/or the reversal of grammatical structures in successive phrases or clauses.

Example: Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country. -- John F. Kennedy, Inaugural

Your Country You

Your Country You

Subject Object

Subject Object

Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good. -- Samuel Johnson

Don't sweat the petty things and don't pet the sweaty things.

Whether we bring our enemies to justice or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done.-- George W. Bush

I flee who chases me, and chases who flees me. Ovid

Fair is foul, and foul is fair. -- Shakespeare, Macbeth I.i

If black men have no rights in the eyes of the white men, of course the whites can have none in the eyes of the blacks. -- Frederick Douglass, An Appeal to Congress for Impartial Suffrage

Chiasmus Practice

ParallelismRepetition of words/phrases at

either the beginning (anaphora) or end of a phrase (epistrophe)

Similar endings of adjacent or parallel words (homioteuleton)

Anaphora ExampleWe 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

I'm not afraid to die.  .  .  . I'm not afraid to live.   I'm not afraid to fail.  I'm not afraid to succeed. I'm not afraid to fall in love.  I'm not afraid to be alone.  I'm just afraid I might have to stop talking about myself for five minutes. -- Kinky Friedman, When the Cat's Away

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contained, I stand and look at them long and long. They do not sweat and whine about their condition, They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God, Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things, Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago, Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth. -- Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, part 32

Anaphora Practice

Epistrophe Example: What lies behind us and what

lies before us are tiny compared to what lies within us. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Example: We are born to sorrow, pass our time in sorrow, end our days in sorrow.

Practice: Take whatever idiot they have at the top of whatever agency and give me a better idiot.  Give me a caring idiot.  Give me a sensitive idiot.  Just don’t give me the same idiot.  -- Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish near New Orleans, speaking to CBS about FEMA Chief Michael Brown on Sep. 6, 2005

HomioteuletonExample: He is esteemed eloquent

which can invent wittily, remember perfectly, dispose orderly, figure diversly [sic], pronounce aptly, confirm strongly, and conclude directly -- Peacham

Practice: My mother weeping, my father wailing, my sister crying, our maid howling, our cat wringing her hands. -- Shakespeare, The Two Gentleman of Verona

ParaprosdokianDefined: surprise or unexpected

ending of a phrase or seriesExample: It has been said that

democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried. -- Winston Churchill

Example: Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana. — Groucho Marx

Paraprosdokian PracticeWhere there's a will, I want to be in it.

I want to die peacefully in my sleep like my father, not screaming and terrified like his passengers. — Bob Monkhouse

I belong to no organized party. I am a Democrat. — Will Rogers

I haven't slept for ten days, because that would be too long. — Mitch Hedberg

Putting it all together…

Some extended examples

Harriet. Harr-i-ette.

Hard-hearted harbinger of haggis. Beautiful, bemused, bellicose butcher.

Un-trust... ing. Un-know... ing. Un-love... ed?

"He wants you back," he screamed into the night air

like a firefighter going to a window that has no fire...

except the passion of his heart. I am lonely. It's really hard.

This poem... sucks.

Alliteration

Homioteuleton Anaphora

Simile

Paraprosdokian

Alliteration

Metaphor

And still of a winter's night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,

When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,

When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,

A highwayman comes riding Riding riding

A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn door.

-- Alfred Noyes, The Highwayman