Tuesday, October 09, 2018

Rhetorical devices

Chiasmus - reversal of words with related meaning.  By day the frolic, and the dance by night.Samuel Johnson

Antimetabole - a subtype of chiasmus. Reversal of same words. "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."

Ciceronian irony - blame by praise and praise by blame.

Apophasis - the speaker or writer brings up a subject by either denying it, or denying that it should be brought up.
In the 1984 U.S. presidential campaign debates, Ronald Reagan used a humorous apophasis to deflect scrutiny of his own fitness at age 73 by replying, "I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience."
In Cicero's "Pro Caelio" speech, he says to a prosecutor, "Obliviscor iam iniurias tuas, Clodia, depono memoriam doloris mei" ("I now forget your wrongs, Clodia, I set aside the memory of my pain [that you caused].")
When apophasis is taken to its extreme, the speaker provides full details, stating or drawing attention to something in the very act of pretending to pass it over: "I will not stoop to mentioning the occasion last winter when our esteemed opponent was found asleep in an alleyway with an empty bottle of vodka still pressed to his lips."