Aesthetic Rhetoric

· Figure of Speech

1. simile

2. metaphor

“The domestic environment is soft,” notes Manson of Donaldson, Lufkin & Jennette. “If it stays that way, Mattel’s sales will eventually succumb. But it should be able to weather the storm. The firm’s best ballast against rough seas lies with European consumers.”

· Metonymy

The city has its philharmonic but also its poverty.

“There is no way to satisfy rival claims,” said lieutenant colonel Patrick J. Garvey. “You want to use crack troops in a surprise attack, unexpected and covered, and yet you stage a Cecil B. de Mille operation. The effect is sure to be offset.”

· Antonomasia

The only way out is fig-leaf diplomacy. So long as the Baltic countries nominally acknowledge their Soviet membership, Gorbechev may give them more latitude in running their own affairs, although grudgingly.

· Bifocal Visions (Paradox)

John Major offered few clues as to what kind of prime minister he would make. “His main feature,” observed the ECONOMIST, “is his featurelessness.”

· Transferred Epithet

1. Synesthesia

Dance can help illuminate elusive music. As Stravinsky once said after watching his Movements for Piano and Orchestra: “To see Balanchine’s choreography is to hear music with one’s eyes. The choreography emphasizes relationships of which I had hardly been aware.”

2. Empathy

Lazy Clouds drifted across the sky.

3. Transferred Epithet

Architectural aridities such as the cut-rate skyscrapers and dreary box-like housing smothered the human spirit.

· Rhetorical Repetition

Lear: And my poor fool is hanged. No,no,no life! Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life, and thou no breath at all? Thou’lt come no more. Never, never, never, never, never! (King Lear)

· Climax and Anti-climax

My books are the books that I am, the confused man, the negligent man, the reckless man, the lusty, obscene, boisterous, scrupulous, lying diabolically truthful man that I am. (Henry Miller)

· Hyperbole

O’ what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!

The courtier’s, scholar’s, soldier’s eye, tongue, sword;

The expectancy and rose of the fair state,

The glass of fashion and the mold of form,

The observed of all observers, quite, quite down!

(Hamlet)

· Euphemism and Understatement

He needs to learn how to help in learning to adhere to rules and standards of fair play. (cf. He cheats.)

He has difficulty distinguishing between imaginary and factual information. (cf. He lies.)

I am sorry to find him an underachiever for some major courses. (cf. He flunked.)

· Pun

We must all hang together, or we shall all hang separately. (Benjamin Franklin)

· Antithesis

Caring for a family member yourself can be enriching and rewarding but also demanding and draining.

· End Weight

“Plush offices are out,” insists Dallas broker Wayne Swearingen. “It’s not in vogue to show how rich you are.” Or were.

· Phonetic Rhetoric

kissed thee ere I killed thee (Othello)

Large factories in China wish to be given freer hand in the right to hire and fire.

JULIET

Sweet, so would I:
Yet I should kill thee with much cherishing.
Good night, good night! parting is such
sweet sorrow,
That I shall say good night till it be morrow.

(Romeo and Juliet)