Rhetorical device

Rhetorical and argumentative devices

Rhetoric is the art of persuasion; so, strictly speaking, rhetorical devices or figures are language techniques employed in order to persuade people. Traditionally, three broad classifications of rhetorical devices by what they appeal to include: emotions, logic, or the presenter's own credibility (i.e. pathos, logos, and ethos, respectively). In the following list, rhetorical device is used narrowly to mean any such device at the phrase- or sentence-level, which according to literary criticM. H. Abrams, departs from ordinary or literal language "mainly by the arrangement of their words to achieve special effects, and not [or not merely], like metaphors and other tropes, by a radical change in the meaning of the words themselves". Often they relate to how new arguments are introduced into the text or how arguments are emphasized.