Manipulation through Words:Rhetorical Devices in Political Speeches

1. Preliminaries

1.1. Rhetorical Devices: Schemes / Figures and Tropes

In any analysis of linguistic style similar to that advanced in the current course, a number of

rhetorical devices are worth considering because the

are important generators and qualifiers of meaning and effect

1. Although such devices can be employed at times in spontaneous common uses of

language,they are especially the mark of

figurative language

. Therefore, they are used in texts in which the language is or can be used figuratively:
literary texts, rhetorical discourses - such as political speeches,sermons, legal speeches - also
the news discourse, etc. What all these types of texts have in common,

beside the permission to use the language figuratively, is the fact that their creation involves a

process of deliberate organisation of the linguistic material, a process that allows the locuto
r, be it aspeaker or a writer, to select the means of linguistic formulation that best serve his
or her ideas,emotions, attitudes, on the one hand, and aims, on the other. Whether the
figures of speech are selectedconsciously or not, the way in which they are given shape in
any type of text is a matter of individualcreativity.The rhetorical devices are generally
divided into two categories:

schemes (or figures

), and

tropes.Rhetorical schemes

describe

the arrangement of individual sounds

phonological schemes

),the arrangement of words (

morphological schemes

), and sentence structure (

syntactical schemes

2
.The main

phonological schemes

are:

alliteration

assonance

consonance

, and

onomatopoeia

.Among the most frequent

morphological schemes

there can be mentioned:

accumulation

anadiplosis

(or

reduplicatio

),

anaphora

enumeration

epiphora

(or

epistrophe

),
epizeuxis

gradatio

(or

climax

),

polyptoton

symploce

, etc. The

syntactical schemes

include:

asyndeton

ellipsis

hypotaxis

inversion

parallelism

parataxis

polysyndeton

3, etc. To this list of rhetorical devices I add three other categories, which can also be
considered

rhetorical strategies
: the

introductory formula / appellative

the collateral circumstances

of place, of time, of issues

and

of persons

, and

the illustration

These rhetorical artifices can make use of any of the devices mentioned above. As these
categories are specific to rhetorical speeches, their aspects will be analysed in more detail in
the present course.

The

rhetorical tropes

, most frequently referred to as

figures of speech

, represent a deviation from the common main significance of a word or phrase (semantic
figures) or include specific appeals to the audience (pragmatic figures)

4. Although the dictionaries of literary terms include a far wider range of figures of speech,
the most frequent such devices are:

euphemism

hyperbole, litotes

(as aspecial type of

meiosis

or
understatement

),

metaphor

metonymy

oxymoron

paradox

personification

pun

(or

paronomasia

),

simile

synecdoche

tautology

, etc.The use of a

rhetorical scheme

or of a

figure of speech in a text, be it written or spoken or, cannot pass unnoticed to an observant
eye (or ear) as the text in point becomes stylistically marked. The stylistic analysis of such
devices aims at pointing out the effects that they achieve on the recipients and the possible

reasons why they were employed in a specific place in the text, as this can account for
the locutors personality

in terms of education and psychological traits of personality such as intentions, emotions,

and attitudes. The truth is that the effects of any stylistic device differ from textto text and
within texts, depending on the immediate context

5. However, among the possible effects achieved through the use of rhetorical and stylistic
devices there can be mentioned: drawing ones attention to certain elements in the text,

making a text easier to understand,

characterising

a certain

Stefanie Lethbridge and Jarmilla Mildorf, 2003,

Basics of English Studies (An introductory course for students of literary studies in English
developed at the English departments of the Universities of Tbingen, Stuttgart and Freiburg)

, p. 23.