Here is the NESA definition of rhetorical devices, from their glossary: Strategies used by writers and speakers to achieve particular effects, for example to stimulate the audience's imagination or thought processes, to draw attention to a particular idea, or simply to display wit and ingenuity in composition. Examples of rhetorical devices are irony, paradox, rhetorical question, contrast and appropriation.
But there is a lot more to rhetoric than that!
The word rhetoric is from the Greek meaning ‘speaker in the assembly’. Rhetoric is the art of using language for persuasion, in speaking and writing. The devices for doing this well were codified by the ancient Greeks and Romans. They did this through observation and analysis. They found patterns and named them. In the Middle Ages in Western Europe rhetoric was taught together with logic and grammar. It was considered part of a classical education. The rules were divided into five processes: invention, arrangement, style, memory and delivery. Each had their subdivisions. Although rhetoric is no longer formally taught in high school (except, perhaps in the study of Ancient Greek and Latin), the ideas from rhetoric are helpful. They provide a student of literature with the words to identify literary devices and their effects. They also help improve your own writing.
For our purposes in high school English figures of rhetoric are tools to help you compose writing that achieves your purpose - to entertain, inform, persuade or present an opinion. They help with strategy and style. They cover logic and how to make your writing memorable. But you need to ensure that you use these figures to help your writing; misuse will hinder your purpose.
You can think of them as formulas. There are principles you can apply which work. These should not be hidden from you.
There are other ways these terms have been categorised and each resource will present the information in its own way. I had intended to present these terms according to how they can be applied as metalanguage - words about words, how to describe sentences, structure etc, but have settled on presententing them according to Lanham’s categories. It is not very helpful to a student to just read a long list presented alphabetically, as available online, unless you then create your own categories.
To make things more complicated, there is often disagreement about terms. These terms have been discussed over two and half thousand years, so it isn’t surprising. What it means for you is that there is some wriggle room. There are devices that can belong to more than one category. These divisions are sometimes unclear. There are broad or disputed meanings. You can apply your own thinking in how you use these terms to organise your responses to texts. There is precedent: the Greeks, Romans, Medieval monks, European Renaissance, various English dictionaries, and there are probably scholars who are currently working on it. There is no one standard dictionary of rhetoric. You can see yourself as continuing the chain of scholarship.
The other main point to remember is this: YOU DO NOT NEED TO REMEMBER THE NAMES OF ALL THE DEVICES. Of course, it would be good if you can, but, depending how keen an English student you are, it will be sufficient to recognise that there are terms for certain structures and effects. You can notice the pattern or device and comment on it by describing it without naming it. However, if you are keen, you can access the resources below. They include devices that you would likely not encounter in high school English - there are literally hundreds, from ab ovo to zeugma - that may spark your interest for further study. (The books I’ve listed below are quite entertaining, especially how they link and give examples of the devices. In his introduction Mark Forsyth tracks how Shakespeare used rhetorical devices, improving as he practised. But I could equally use The Beatles as an example. They may not have been formally trained, but they were immersed in music and listened to a wide range of music, including classical. They experimented, played and worked, and could reference ideas to bring to their own songs, even if they couldn't describe everything technically.)
I am continuing to work on this resource. For each device or figure I want to include the etymology of the term, an example from ancient literature, and an example from a modern context which includes women and people of colour, who are usually absent from these examples. I want the example to say something relevant about our lives today. It is an ambitious project I have set myself, and I’ll update the posts as I go along. But I’ll do the simpler posts about the devices first, so you can get started.
A useful activity to begin might be to take a large piece of paper (cardboard or butcher’s paper) or a whiteboard, and write down all the words you use in subject English. This is your metalanguage. See how you can categorise your metalanguage. You will then grow this as you learn more terms and devices. This will help you with everything in subject English. Growing your metalanguage is part of the purpose of the new HSC syllabus.
Books and Further Reading:
Aristotle - Rhetoric, Poetics
Quintilian, Cicero, Longinus
A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms - Richard A. Lanham
The Elements of Eloquence: How to Perfect the English Phrase - Mark Forsyth
Rhetorical Devices: A Handbook and Activities For Student Writers - Brendan McGuigan
A Handbook of Rhetorical Devices - Robert A. Harris
http://bmshri.org/sites/default/files/sri_sahithya/A_Handbook_of_Rhetoric.pdf
A Handbook of Rhetoric
http://www.hellesdon.org/documents/Advanced%20Rhetoric.pdf
A Periodic Table of Figures of Speech
Wikipedia's Glossary of rhetorical terms
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_rhetorical_terms
And this site, where the figures are grouped according to what they do.
http://rhetoric.byu.edu/Figures/Figures-Groupings.htm
See also here:
https://writingcommons.org/section/rhetoric/
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